


Coals of Fire

by jat_sapphire



Series: Still Amok and associated stories [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:13:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Still Amok," as the Enterprise moves on to its next mission and both Spock and Kirk cope with the emotional fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue:  Never Quite Amok  (Jim Remembers)

**Author's Note:**

> Over the course of many drafts, this story was betaed by my longsuffering friends Islaofhope, T'Aaneli, Rabble Rousser and Animasola. For their patience, unflagging enthusiasm, and brainstorming ideas, I cannot thank them enough.

He frightened me, and that was very hard to forgive. He had been frightening me all along, from the time Chris Chapel ran screaming out of his quarters and he stood in the doorway, where he never stands, shouting, which he never does. There was none of the covert warmth I'm used to seeing in his eyes. He was a stranger, wearing my best friend's face.

I buried the feelings, just went on, eventually dragged the information we needed out of him, and of course that made me angry too. Damn him, there he sat behind his desk and he wouldn't even look at me, and I wanted to strike out at him. "You've been called the best first officer in the Fleet" -- I gave that compliment like a fist in the face. And I was glad of it, glad to hurt him, in some dark corner of my mind.

For god's sake, that bonding of his wasn't even in his personnel file! I checked. That week, I must have checked and checked again five -- no, six times. I felt betrayed. My friend was married, or nearly, and I didn't know. He didn't tell me.

And then the ceremony, the marriage challenge, and I thought I was over the anger, but when I had to fight him I was . . . not entirely sorry. And then I was purely fucking terrified. He hated me, I could see it, it burned out of his eyes the moment he got that weapon in his hands. This wasn't a performance. I couldn't control it. He wanted to kill me, and he was strong enough to do it.

When I woke up in Sickbay, my clothes -- I've never had that happen, never before. McCoy took it in stride: "Jim, you've seen people die all right, too many, but you haven't cleaned up after dead bodies. You were dead, Jim, or near enough. Sphincters relax." But it wasn't him, lying there in his own shit. And to tell the cold, absolute truth, I am not sure it happened after the neural paralyzer.

I was not feeling close to Spock. I was glad that he was back, of course, and that I was alive and that we had the chance to go back to the good part of our friendship. But then it became obvious that the pon farr wasn't over. He still needed sex, or he would still die. And it was also pretty obvious who he wanted. It's not that I had never thought about it. I have. I've looked at him. I'd seen him look at me from time to time, too, and yes, I fantasized. And no, I wouldn't have started it then, maybe never. Some captains work with their partners; some couples and married groups join Starfleet together; I've married people myself, some in the same chains of command. But I don't fuck my officers, and that's just all there is to it. 

But then there was no choice, and I didn't much like that either. I hate having the decisions made for me, especially by fate. I really hated facing Spock, feeling his hands on me, seeing him so close to meltdown, when I had never changed my mind about how bad an idea this was in the long run. And he wasn't letting go. A good thing I remembered what T'Pau had said, the only word that got through to him even through the blood lust. Works on ordinary lust too. So I knew he wouldn't hurt me by mistake, and I really, really hated having to feel relieved about that.

While I was getting dressed, I kept looking over at the bed, and he never moved, except his ribcage: it raised, held, lowered, held again, like a breathing exercise. Like someone decompressing after a long dive. Like someone so damn miserable he could hardly stand to live. 

There was just nothing in my head. Nothing to say.

I want to go back. Undo it all. That day it all started, when McCoy stopped me and I was so impatient, thinking I had so much to get through and all of it routine, and then the soup bowl came flying out Spock's door . . . before that. 

Instead we have to keep going, to Altair 6, joining two other starships and celebrating the President's inauguration. I don't feel like celebrating anything. We'll be there in a few days, and I . . . I feel . . . I can't tell. There's too much, and it's too confused. I need some time. I need to find my normal life again, and I don't have much time to do it.


	2. Act I: The Art of the Possible

If there was one thing that ought to make him feel completely normal, Jim thought, it should be a briefing. Uhura, Scott, Sulu, McCoy -- all the usual suspects in their usual seats, with their usual faces -- but not quite. Looking down the length of the briefing table, Jim could see eyes shifting. He wondered exactly what the current scuttlebutt was about recent events in the first officer's quarters. The only other person certain to be ignorant was staring into the middle distance, elbows on the table and fingers steepled.

"Well," Jim said, sitting down, "let's get this show on the road," and wondered which show he really had in mind. He had been questioning his own reactions a lot lately. He wanted to stop. Shore leave was probably what he needed, but there was none in sight at the moment. Unless he counted Altair, and he suspected that in the end he would not be able to count it.

Spock moved one hand toward the base of the computer terminal, while the other drifted down to rest on the table. The screen lit with the image of a man with dark gray skin and navy blue hair. On the pictured face was an extraordinary expression, a hero's look of strength, intelligence, and purpose. A little theatrical, Jim felt, but still impressive.

"Aulua Jiilau," said Spock. "He has now been the inaugurated president of Altair 6 for two days. According to the Federation's political analysts -- and apparently, according to the Altairian electorate -- the one man who can unify the planet's factions and complete the peace negotiations with Altair 5."

"Admiral Komack said so," Jim agreed, "but why? What makes him the only man of the hour?" 

Spock's eyes flicked to his face, then away to the center of the table again. "Altair 5," he went on, "was founded as an agricultural colony by Altair 6, three hundred and forty-five planetary years ago. Jiilau was confirmed as the Governor-General of Altair 5 shortly before the outbreak of armed insurrection there. After several police actions were insufficient to stop the home rule movement, Jiilau was given specific and strict orders by the Altair 6 government to make a deliberately brutal pre-emptive strike." There was a special look of austere distress that Spock got whenever he spoke of violence; he wore it now. "The plan was to destroy the city of Giniwallon."

"Destroy it?" Sulu sounded like he couldn't believe it; Jim had the same problem. McCoy made a sound of disgust, and Spock looked even more austere.

"Yes, Mr. Sulu. Giniwallon had a population of approximately 485,060, and it had already seceded from the rest of the colony. Jiilau's orders were to level it, not only to kill its inhabitants but to reduce the city itself to rubble." Spock paused. "This would in fact have crippled the home rule movement."

"He refused," Jim guessed. 

"He did. In fact, he took command of the fleet of ships which had been dispatched to destroy Giniwallon, and immediately ordered them disarmed; then he returned with the fleet to Altair 6. Before his trial and subsequent imprisonment, he released to the Altairian press every communique he had received relative to the planned massacre, as well as a great deal of supplementary information, interviews, pictures, artworks, and so forth produced by the colonists. He was, in effect, their publicist." Spock's eyebrow twitched up, and Jim felt better, seeing that familiar look. A little better.

"But he didn't manage to stop the war," said McCoy.

"No, but his status as a prisoner of conscience and the scandal created by the released material was a significant influence on the government's further policy. No such wholesale massacre was attempted again."

"A hero," mused Jim, "and now he's the president . . . and he changed the date of his inauguration."

"Yes, why'd he do that?" asked McCoy. "Only a week earlier, too, so what good could that be?"

Spock, without actually moving any muscle in his face, managed to look completely unconvinced as he said, "The official explanation was that the original date coincided with the most sacred fast of one of the planet's religious sects."

"But you don't believe it?" McCoy was never one to let anything go unspoken, especially by Spock.

"I have no logical reason to disbelieve it. The religious holiday, the observation by fast, is real; it is held on that date every year."

"Every year! So it was predictable? No reason to wait until just two weeks beforehand to notice it?" McCoy pressed Spock.

"Yes," Spock agreed. Jim had noticed that lately they had not been baiting each other as often as they sometimes did. Even that touched a nerve, but everything did, now, and it really had nothing to do with -- well, yes, it had something to do with Spock, foolish to pretend even for one thought that it didn't.

"There must be rumors. There must be reasons," Jim insisted. "I don't buy the holiday. Something's going on, more than I realized when -- " He shook his head. "More than Komack told me. He ordered three starships to this inauguration. He must have expected trouble."

"From the colony, that Altair 5?" asked Scotty.

"Perhaps," said Spock. "Or from disaffected citizens of Altair 6. Apparently several threats have been received, though the exact nature of the threats does not seem to be known."

"Gentlemen, we need better information," Jim said. "Perhaps the Farragut and Constellation crews will know more by the time we get there. We're late for this party, after all. Maybe they'll have taken care of everything for us." His grin said, fat chance, and we love it that way, don't we? 

Spock looked up, looking slightly surprised. "The Farragut will not be in attendance. She has been reassigned to an emergency at Space Laboratory Tau Omega. New results in the station scientists' investigation of Bertholdt rays have revealed that they are intensely dangerous to animal life, and the scientists must be evacuated."

"Why," asked Jim with deceptive mildness, "didn't I know that already?"

"The message just came in before the briefing started, sir," Uhura answered promptly. "I was waiting until I gave the Communications and Protocol reports."

Jim reminded himself that the Enterprise did not have sole responsibility for every emergency in the galaxy. "Well, President Jiilau seems fated to have only two starships at his inauguration." He reflected without dismay that Komack must be having fits. "In any case, Lieutenant Uhura, let's have that protocol report. What else do we need to know to get along in Altairian society?" The presentation that followed was so routine that it was boring, and Jim reveled in the boredom.

"Thank you, Uhura," he said afterward so sincerely that she looked at him in surprise.

Then she smiled. "You're welcome, Captain."

He glanced down the table to where Spock was doing some file transfer on the library terminal, then back past all the other faces. "Well, people, this meeting is adjourned." He stood at the table as they left, not needing to see them go but not feeling any special urgency to be elsewhere. Spock was gathering up his disks.

Suddenly he looked up and said, "Captain, a word?" and despite the formality of the question, Jim felt suddenly chilled. Everyone else had gone. He and Spock had not been alone since they had had sex; they had never had a chance, or made a chance, to talk about anything that had happened since Spock's aborted marriage. This was not the moment Jim wanted to start.

"Yes, Mr. Spock?"

"I request permission to return to alpha shift, Captain. The research projects in which I was engaged for the last four gamma shifts are complete, and Dr. McCoy assures me that I am in perfect health."

"Really." Jim thought about that. "How did that come up?"

"I asked him to perform a physical exam -- "

"You asked him? Spock?"

"I did. He also registered some surprise."

"Some surprise! I'll bet." Love to have been a fly on that wall. Or, on second thought, maybe not.

"His exact words were, 'Tell Jim you're healthy as a horse and chomping at the bit to get back to work.'"

The joking response left his lips without any second thought: "And you asked him what resemblance you could possibly bear to any member of the genus Equus."

Spock inclined his head, his lips just curved in one of his typical not-smiles, and Jim flashed unexpectedly back to the full smile he had seen on that mouth, only a few times, and the last time was -- Jim clenched his teeth while Spock was still saying gently, "Why, Captain, you might almost have been present."

"Yes, well, Mr. Spock, permission granted," Jim said in haste, stepping back, and immediately wondering why he had moved. Spock raised his head slowly; his mouth set and his eyes grew remote. Then he nodded once and left the briefing room, and Jim let a minute or so pass before he followed.

~~~~~

It was autumn on the southern continent, and the goldenwood trees for which the Altair system was so justly famous were alight with subtly shaded yellows: lemon and saffron and honey, banana and wicker and maize. Gracefully curved branches full of perfect oval leaves stood in vases instead of flowers, and President Jiilau's entourage all wore either corsages of fresh leaves or some ornament carved from the glittering wood. But the showpiece of this reception was the long conference table, a huge single plank of goldenwood as long as a shuttlecraft and tapering from two meters wide at one end to .72 meters at the other, as Spock estimated the size. To prevent anyone from carelessly putting food or drink on the precious surface, the table had been tilted so that its widest end slanted up to shoulder-height, while the narrow end was cradled in a rack with accents in latinum, partially obscured by a label in Federation Standard: "Presented to President Aulua Jiilau on the occasion of his inauguration, with the good wishes of the people of the Five Aggregate."

Jiilau himself stood near the wide end of the table, flanked by his two spouses, receiving guests and performing for the news service video pickups. He shook hands, saluted, patted shoulders, or whatever form of greeting was most familiar to his guest. At the moment he was flicking a long blue-gray tongue at the Ambassador for the Regulus Allied Corporations. The ambassador, a lean, broad-shouldered woman with a cascade of dark curls, laughed musically and touched Jiilau's cheek, then the cheeks of his husband and his wife.

"That will be a popular clip," said Doctor McCoy, looking on from across the room. "Four beautiful people."

Spock looked down at the glass of fruit juice in his hands, and responded, "Not to mention that the trade agreements being negotiated by this ambassador are of the greatest importance to the Altairian economy."

"Mmm, I suppose a few people watching the vids might be taking the logical view," said McCoy.

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps, Spock?"

"It is never easy to predict the reactions of races who allow their emotions to rule their behavior." Spock turned to put the glass down, scanning the reception crowd as he did so.

Jim was standing under the tall windows at the other end of the room, speaking to one of the ministers of the Upper House. He was holding her arm up in the late afternoon sunlight, admiring the goldenwood bracelet on her wrist -- and, given his openmouthed smile and the woman's mesmerized expression, admiring the owner of the bracelet as well.

McCoy chuckled. "I see Jim is doing his usual thing."

"Define 'his usual thing,' Doctor."

"Charming the underwear right off all the prettiest young things in sight."

Spock assumed a disapproving expression, but said nothing.

"Oh, it has its uses for the rest of us, no doubt. Considering we missed the inauguration by two days, and God and T'Pau forbid we tell 'em why, the presidents' aids and such are being mighty kind to us. Jim's charm has smoothed a lot of feathers. And various other parts of diplomatic anatomy, I bet. Look at him now."

Spock was looking. He noticed that several other people in his line of sight seemed to be gazing at Jim as well -- a considerable number in view of the array of luminaries in the room, quite available to be gawked at: media stars, the command crew of another starship, the diplomats of all the nearest star systems, and the highest officials on the planet. Part of the captain's attraction could be novelty since, among all the celebrities in attendance, only he had not been present for at least some of the earlier functions in a planetwide celebration which had now been going on for several weeks.

Many of the onlookers, however, must have been staring for much the same reason Spock was. Jim Kirk was extraordinarily good to look at as he stood before the backdrop of the window and its glory of sun and yellow-leafed trees and bright sky, in his gold-trimmed dress uniform, bending his gilded head. The woman who laughed with him was a flaxen blonde, dressed in a pale gauzy fabric that glowed against the blue-gray of her skin and that seemed to move even while she was still. And now they were moving, walking among the other guests with his hand at her back, steps matching like dancers.

Halfway down the length of the room, Jim suddenly lifted his head and looked straight at Spock, as if he had been aware of Spock's exact location in the room and had known all along that Spock was watching him. His face was unexpectedly solemn, even stern. Their eyes met for only a moment, and then he looked back at his companion.

Spock turned to McCoy. "Excuse me, Doctor," he said. He picked up his juice glass and paced evenly away in the direction of the windows. 

~~~~~

McCoy's eyes traveled from the blue sheen across Spock's shoulders to the glint of Jim's hair in the crowd. He shook his head.

"I wonder..." said a quiet voice at his side. He turned to look, and there was the Ambassador from Regulus. "I wonder, are you a member of the Enterprise crew?"

Her name, he remembered after a moment, was Rachandra Estellare. She had a spare, sculptured beauty that was set off by the soft lines of her layered robes, and her eyes were just the same color as the emeralds on her jeweled openwork collar. She was the prettiest sight McCoy had seen in a month of Sundays, but he also noticed that while he was thinking what to say, she was looking at him with a quizzical smile that suggested that she was at least one step ahead of him.

"Your uniform..." she gestured, paused, and then went on, "I have not seen you at previous inaugural functions."

Thoroughly charmed, McCoy said, "Have you been to so many? I'm delighted to have caught your attention at this one."

"I am collecting the commemorative buttons for each event," she said so gravely that it took him a few seconds to laugh.

He made polite noises about her position as Ambassador, and she began talking about her upcoming negotiations and Altairian exports. "Such as the goldenwood of which that -- rather ostentatious table is made."

"Yes, I've been wanting to ask someone about that," said McCoy, mostly meaning it. "It's a beautiful thing."

"It is a very expensive thing." She held out her hand, where she wore three wooden rings and a bracelet carved into links. "I bought these on Regulus, and they cost as much as this -- " she gestured at her jeweled collar. "A whole table, and given from the ex-colony to the ex-colonizers, is . . . I don't know the idiom in Standard. It is the sort of gift which creates as many negative as positive feelings in the recipient. A generous gesture which evokes guilt and distress."

"Heaping coals of fire on someone's head?"

"I don't know. That sounds very strange." She pursed her lips a little, an expression McCoy mightily admired. "You do know the colony on Five was founded especially to cultivate goldenwood? The trees grew well there, so well that they became a serious threat to the local ecology -- and the colony's only real cash crop."

McCoy looked at the table again. Kudzu that size would certainly be a major annoyance. Then he looked back at the ambassador, beginning to doubt that this encounter had anything to do with his natural charm or sexual magnetism. He asked, "Does Regulus have a trade agreement with Altair 5?"

"Not as yet. Their government is still in the process of formation. We have a petitioner to the Aggregate Constitutional Committee, of course."

Nodding, McCoy pushed a little harder: "You wouldn't be trying to pump me for information, or the official Federation position, or something?"

"Could I get such information from you?"

"No, I'm just an old country doctor."

Now it was her turn to nod, and though her expression was still cordial, he could see the thoughts buzzing behind her eyes. "There is a favor I would like to ask of you," she said, "well within a 'country doctor's' purview. Could you point out Captain James Kirk to me?"

At least she was honest, though he was thoroughly put off to find himself, once again, standing in Jim Kirk's shadow. Even when he had from time to time exploited Jim's reputation to meet women, he found it depressing, and now he really had no taste for it. "I'll introduce you to him now, if you wish," he said, on his dignity, and led the way through the crowd; Rachandra followed in silence. 

~~~~~

Jim knew this feeling too well, the edginess of delay and uncertainty, and knew how dangerous it was to be so wound up while he could do nothing. If this had been a shore leave, or even an ordinary ceremonial visit when he could have slipped away from the party after a shorter interval, he would have gone somewhere to relax, to get away, even to drink a little. He could not do that now. Couldn't afford to lose himself amongst strangers, couldn't risk the fogginess of hangover later, when something might happen at last.

But he knew another drug. How many years ago had he first realized that someone else's body could dull his mind, awake his senses, sidestep his feelings as well or better than the most potent alcohol? And in Rachandra's eyes were the same tension and the same knowledge; she absolved him. 

He brought her onto the ship. It was a practical decision, since her dirtside quarters were shared with the members of her little embassy, but he wasn't happy about the hunger in himself that insisted Sex! Now! and drove him to this point, when they were in his quarters in the dim light and her eyes were half-lidded and he teased himself with a gradual approach, undressing her slowly. He always liked to do that, and in this case the layered robes were like petals he was pulling back. She stood easily, moving only to give him access to the fastenings of her jeweled collar or to raise her arms away from her sides as he drew down the silken sleeves. Under the outer robe, she wore a sleeveless, knee-length top in a lighter silk. Her shoulders relaxed in his hands; her arms were muscular and smooth-skinned; above the loose, low neckline were the tender hollows of her collarbone and upper ribs. He stroked there and she shivered; he ran his hands down the silk to cup her breasts and she leaned forward, her mouth just opening. Her pliancy excited him. Her small breasts grew warmer in his palms while under his fingertips were the hard edges of her ribs. He kneaded, flattened his hands and rubbed, and felt the nubs of her nipples rise under the cloth. He held her breasts and thought of other breasts he had touched like this.

"Undress me," she reminded him, and he put his fingers into the loose knit of her sash, trying to find the ends or fastenings by touch while he kissed her neck up to her jaw. She chuckled and pushed his shoulders away, then undid the sash herself in a moment. He took off his dress uniform tunic, then bent to slide his hands up her legs, catching her top's edge and lifting it, up her thighs, finding the waist of her loose trousers and dipping index fingers under it just a little, then up the waist, the ribs, making her shiver again as he dragged his nails so lightly over her skin that he could scarcely feel the contact. He pushed his hips into hers, rubbing his erection against the cloth of her pants and his. She raised her chin, closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he gathered the silk in his hands. He brought it up over her head and she pulled out her arms and wrapped them around his waist. She was a little taller than he. He had to pull her head down to kiss her. He tangled his hands in her hair, combed through the length of it and then did it again, burying his fingers where her hair was as warm as her scalp and dragging down slowly to the cool wash of the ends. He loved long hair.

Her breasts pressed under his collarbone, her hips rode above his, her tongue reached down into his mouth, tickled his soft palate. Oh, yes, he loved that too, every texture of the new body. Here were the ridges at the roof of her mouth; here were the edges of her teeth; the top and the underside of her tongue, the varying textures of her lips and chin and throat: here a little rougher, there a little softer. Taking a new lover, he sometimes felt as if he were drawing a map, running his fingertips or his tongue along all the borders of texture. She seemed now to do the same, moving her fingers in tangled lines up and down his sides and back. She worked his trousers slowly down, her hands on his ass, his thighs, down to the backs of his knees. There she stopped, looking back up at him, laughter in her eyes. "I do not know the fastenings of your boots," she said. So he pulled them off while she stood back -- in fact, as he stepped out of the pants and boots, she circled him, looking like a predator deciding where first to bite.

He turned and caught her by the waist and worked his fingers into her trousers, running them back and forth until she writhed and twisted in his arms: she must be ticklish. The waistband rode his wrists as he reached farther down over cooler, tighter skin, filling his hands and making her jump. "You love this," he murmured, "love this," speaking to her and to himself, remembering touch and touching her.

He pulled down her trousers, ignoring her frustrated sound as his hands left her ass, and leaving the fabric heaped around her ankles, stroked up the inside of her calves. She shifted her feet farther apart and he kissed her legs as he rubbed them, up around the thighs, and she said "Ooh," in a small crooning voice as he neared her crotch. He ran his fingertips across the last few inches of the inner thigh, where the skin was a little loose, found the spot where Areel was ticklish, Ruth felt nothing much and Carol was so sensitive that she only wanted the touch when she was so aroused that any movement made her groan. He couldn't remember ever touching Gary there, not on purpose. Probably he had. So warm, but not as warm as --

He jerked his hand back as if he had been burnt, flashing back to the fierce heat of Spock's skin, the way he had moaned deep in his throat when Jim's hand slid between his thighs, the textures of his cock and balls and the scent -- oh god she smells all wrong, she feels all wrong, no, what am I thinking? Why else am I here, why did I bring her but because the other is wrong, I'm the captain, I can't have it, I can't have him, dammit, touch her, touch her -- he reached for her hips, pulled her to his face, rubbed his hot cheeks against her thighs. His forehead was teased by her rough bush of pubic hair, and she thrust her fingers across his scalp and crooned again. He was losing his erection and his throat was tight. If she spoke words, he could not hear them over the roar of his own need to touch a skin not his own and not Spock's and not, in the end, important.

She eased one foot up out of the tangled fabric and stepped back, then moved the other, hands still in his hair. He followed willingly, and step by step she pulled him to the bed. Her grip was strong and she knew exactly where she wanted him to touch her, and as she murmured and pushed at his head and hands, he simply followed her lead. He would not think. He would not. Skin, nipple in his mouth, the other breast against his cheek, hands holding her waist. He suckled and licked the tightened aureole, then kissed down over the softness of her stomach and the roughness of the hair that hid her clit, and she flung her legs apart over the sides of the bed as he slipped his hands under her, lifted her ass to put his tongue just where she wanted it.

A drug, a drug, the taste of her and the slick folds he was licking and the way she moved and groaned. He was hard again. He sat up and pulled her hips toward him, entered her and began to rock, then to pump, and she spoke, the same phrase over and over, but not in Standard. Her hands made fists, her fists thumped against the ledge behind her head, and her voice rose still higher and louder and then she came, deep shudders rolling through her. Even her arms shook, and her fists trembled open, fingers fluttering. He came too, watching her.

She lay with her eyes closed and he still looked at her. She drew in a long breath, let it go, and her lips curved in a smile that for a moment wrung his heart: strands of dark hair over the pale forehead, the sharp curve of cheekbones, dark lashes lifting -- but her eyes were green and all the shapes were wrong. Her face had no real openness, no special warmth. He pushed back from her and off the bed, and stood looking down at her as she stretched and sat up.

"You have a place I can wash?" she said.

"Through there," he gestured toward the door. "A sonic shower." 

She nodded and stood, then touched his cheek. He thought she might say something personal, 'thank you' or 'I liked that' or some such thing, but she just said, "Do you mind if I wash first? Or is there somewhere that you will soon need to be?"

"Be my guest." While she was gone, he picked up her robes and underwear as well as his own uniform and shook them out, pulled on his briefs and pants again. Not, he decided, the dress tunic. He got out one of the green wraparound uniform tops and put it on, pulled on his boots, brushed his hair. There, now at least he was marginally decent, so he could walk her to the transporter room when she was ready to go. He picked up the garnet globe that had rolled off the ledge when she thumped it, realizing that she could not leave soon enough for him. No sooner had he thought so than she reappeared, walking without self-consciousness, completely naked and very beautiful, and he felt nothing but impatience. She looked him up and down with a wry half-smile. "You do have an appointment after all?"

"No," he said, "no appointment."

"Ah." Her voice was thoughtful, her face solemn as she turned to where her clothes lay on the nearby chair. She dressed in silence. When she turned around again, she was the Ambassador, her eyes full of calculation. "Captain," she said, "it is very important to my people that the supply of goldenwood should continue."

"Ambassador, it is very important to the Federation to maintain peace in this solar system and in this sector." It was very strange to deliver one of his planned interview responses in these circumstances, with the scent of sex still on his body and her clothes wrinkled where he had crushed them in his fists or stepped on them. But by the look on her face, postcoital trade negotiations were her daily routine.

"Trade is peace," she said, and he thought he was hearing the single religious tenet of Regulus.

"We shall keep the peace," he reiterated, "and you can see to the trade."

"Jiilau has some idealistic idea of writing the trade agreement in the Five Aggregate's favor. Many of his ministers are furious about it, and the Fivers have no coherent position, no protection." She put one hand on his arm and gazed intently at him. "I tell you, Captain, there is great potential for violence in this situation."

Tell me something I don't know. He stared up at her. "From whom?"

"I am neither a terrorist," she said steadily, "nor a policeman. I cannot guess. But I want your promise that you will stop it, prevent it."

"That's what we're here for." He stared, but she did not yield. "You might trust us to do our jobs." Two starships. Was Komack right -- can two starships be not enough? "You didn't have to fuck me," he said the word deliberately, but she did not react, "to get me to do the job I'm here to do anyway."

Then she did smile a little again, and said, "Oh, no. The fucking was a fringe benefit."

He grabbed her chin in one hand, her shoulder in the other. "Rachandra," he said grimly. It was almost the first time he had said her name at all, certainly the first time since they had beamed up. "What aren't you telling me? That I need to know?" After a moment her eyes slid away, and he knew she would speak.

"I have gotten anonymous letters," she said. "I am afraid to show them, afraid to respond, afraid they will stop. They give me information about Jiilau's government and intentions, and the information has been accurate, as far as I have tried to verify. I have used this information to form my approach to the negotiations. You understand?"

He thought he did, but was not greatly interested in her moral dilemma. "What else do they say?"

"Jiilau moved his inauguration. You know that. What no one knows is why. My letters say that he did receive threats that the ceremony would be disrupted, the temple where the ceremony was being held -- you know about that? The fast? He had already done this unprecedented thing, scheduled the ceremony in the temple so that even the fasters could go, even on that day, and then to have the temple threatened -- they said they would destroy it, all the people in it, and of course Jiilau and all the offworld guests. Unless Jiilau backed down on a number of initiatives, including the favored trade status for Five. He could have increased security, hunted down the threats -- instead he moved the ceremony, put it before the trade vote. He has . . . an unorthodox mind."

Jim nodded. "Go on."

"Now my letters say that the next threat is to destroy the goldenwood itself. A biological agent, a parasite, an explosive barrage, fire, the threats vary but their intent is the same. Five's plantations will be destroyed if Jiilau does not yield."

"And he won't. But you don't trust him to solve the problem either."

"Do you not understand? I cannot rest, I cannot trust others to do what I cannot oversee. This is too important. I cannot lose this concession for my people!" Now her face was naked, now her eyes were alive, much more than during sex. He looked at her and recognized his own obsession. He had seen himself too often this evening, and none of the views were pretty ones. But he put that aside, as he always could when there was a job to do. Right now the job was strategizing, and more than ever he was impatient for her to go -- if she really had given all her information.

She seemed to be finished, so he let go of her chin and stepped back. "The next letter comes to me," he said very slowly and forcefully.

Still, she thought about it before nodding. "Yes, I will tell you."

"And any other relevant news." She thought again, and he felt a flare of anger. "This is not a negotiation, Rachandra. For god's sake, how are we supposed to work in the dark?" Still she said nothing. "Tell me you are going to cooperate."

"I will," she said at last. He stared at her for a moment or two more, but she seemed candid enough, and after all the logic of the matter was obvious. 

"Why did you wait for me? Why not give this information to Captain Chang on the Farragut, when she was here, or Commodore Decker on the Constellation?"

She smiled slowly; he waited for speech too; she touched his cheek again. "I was looking forward to the fringe benefits."

He saw her off the ship and went back to his quarters to shower and change. He needed to chew these ideas over, brainstorm, plan. Eventually he'd have to brief Decker and coordinate their strategies, but first he wanted to get his own plans clear. And there was one person on the ship who had always helped him do that. He pulled the clean shirt over his head and put his hand out toward the comm -- and hesitated, and then made an irritated sound and pushed the button. For heaven's sake, if he couldn't discuss strategy with his first officer, one of them had better transfer. The thought was painful. No, no transferring. They would beat this.

"Mr. Spock," he said, and there was no reply. "Mr. Spock? Computer, locate Mr. Spock."

"Mr. Spock is in Rec Room 1," said the computer.

"At this hour?" he asked, and of course got no response. Well, it won't be crowded -- it's as good a place as any. He closed the comm and left.

Inside the door of the rec room he paused, looking at the deserted space, the empty tables, and Spock at the three-d chessboard. Spock moved a rook, left his fingers on the piece and contemplated it, seemingly unaware of Jim's entrance. Jim walked over and took the chair on the other side of the board. "A problem? Or are you playing the computer?"

Spock looked up with eyes as bleak as Jim had ever seen them. "A problem," he said.

"Well, I have one too." Spock lifted his chin and waited. Jim went on, "I've gotten some information ..." and summarized what Rachandra had told him. 

At the end Spock nodded, an eyebrow rising, and said, "Yes . . . that is a plausible account of President Jiilau's motivations. If you feel the source is reliable?"

"'Reliable' is not quite the way I would describe Ambassador Estellare. Or her anonymous letters. But I think she means to tell the truth. This time."

"Then my recommendation is that we acquaint Commodore Decker with this information and that you and he come to an agreement about a suitable course of action."

"Naturally, Mr. Spock. I plan to. But I want your ideas about where we can go from there."

"Surely the Altairian Intelligence agency has some idea who is sending these threats, or President Jiilau or his staff may have some notion. Another line of investigation which we can suggest is to locate the origin of the anonymous letters. This is presumably someone on, or closely associated with, the president's staff."

Jim grinned, picturing Rachandra's reaction to that idea. "I'm sure the Ambassador would prefer not to reveal the existence of the letters."

After a moment, Spock asked, "Do you feel bound to protect her interests?"

"No more than those of any other party." Jim saw Spock's expression shift, but so slightly that he could not tell what the movement meant. "But go on," Jim prompted.

"I suggest a meeting with heads of the relevant agencies and offices. Even if they know nothing, it will be wise to coordinate our efforts and to collaborate with them. After that . . . there will be more options than I can foretell. But one necessity will be to contact Altair 5, perhaps to go there, to be certain that the goldenwood plantations are as well protected from attack as possible."

"Very sensible. If I suggest it, that will likely be our responsibility. So let's be prepared. Research the goldenwood plantations, start making a security plan now. Hmm. I met one of the ministers at the reception: she may give me a way in, let me know more about where the legislature stands. The Ambassador seemed to feel that there was conflict there, and that it might escalate. Maybe I can find out how far it might go."

Spock nodded, then looked down, hesitated, looked up again. "If I may make a request, Captain," he said very formally.

"Go ahead," Jim said, curious.

But Spock looked down again and did not speak.

"What is it, Spock?"

"I have no right to ask," he said, and Jim felt a chill at the slight roughness of his voice. Spock would not meet his eyes and did not go on.

"Spock?"

"I withdraw my request."

"Oh, no," Jim said, "tell me. What's the matter?" He looked at Spock's fingers, gripping the chess piece tightly, the tips and knuckles pale.

"I heard you," said Spock tightly, still not looking up.

"I'm right here -- " Jim began blankly, and then he suddenly grasped what Spock was talking about. This time the wave of feeling was scalding. He thought of Rachandra's fists hitting the shelf, and of the noise she made; he thought of Spock leaving his quarters to do chess problems; he remembered feeling absolved but only now let himself know why he had wanted absolution.

"I'm . . ." sorry, he didn't say. He was also embarrassed in a way he hadn't been for years. Spock brought out this odd prudery: Jim remembered the awful conversation about 'Vulcan biology' and the way they could not look at each other then. This time, it was the chess piece they were both staring at. Not letting himself dwell on the action, he reached out and touched the back of Spock's hand, then lifted the rook out of his loosened fingers and put it back onto the board.

"I never meant to hurt you." When Jim said that, Spock looked up, but his face was too rigid to read. "Uh, if I did hurt you. I suppose that's the wrong word, an emotion. I'm sorry I disturbed you. Were you trying to sleep?"

"No." Spock's hand curled closed, and he drew it slowly to the edge of the table. "Jim."

Just the name, his own name, and he was flashing back again -- the last time he had heard the rough baritone syllable, rougher then. Spock had used no endearments, had hardly spoken, but Jim had never heard his own name sound quite like that. 

"Jim," Spock said again, "I -"

"We have to work together," Jim said. "I need my first officer." That was what he knew, and he backed away from hearing anything that would shake it. Anything that would shatter the hard-held composure on the face before him -- or his own.

Spock thought for what seemed a long while. Then he said, simply, "You may rely upon me . . . precisely as you have always done."

"Thank you," Jim said, meaning it. "And I -- in future I'll -" He didn't really know what he wanted to promise. He wasn't going to stop having sex. "I'll do what I can," he said helplessly, "I'm sorry," remembering Spock's often-repeated opinion that apologies were illogical, and very aware that apologizing for something he might well do again really was absurd.

But Spock only said, surprisingly, "I also am sorry," and then stood. "Permission to go, Captain."

"I'll go," Jim said, standing too, "you can go back to the chess problem."

Now that look was irony, one eyebrow rising, the first touch of anything approaching humor that Jim had seen. "I believe I am finished with the chessboard for the present."

Jim wondered what he was avoiding, anyway. Leaving the room at the same time Spock did? Walking down the corridor together? Ridiculous. He made a movement, not quite a shrug, not quite a nod, his lips tugging outward in a kind of smile. An awkward moment that yet was not, somehow, as awkward as he expected. And when they went together to the lift and then to their quarters, walking with Spock at his shoulder felt closer to normal than he thought it could.


	3. Act II: War by Other Means

Spock and Doctor McCoy entered the transporter room, and Spock said "Energize," to Lieutenant Kyle, who began the beam-up. Captain Kirk materialized, and Spock knew even before he was entirely on board that he was angry: the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, gave him away as much as the dangerous expression in his eyes when the beam released him and he moved off the transporter pad lightly, like a hunting animal.

"Meeting go well, Captain?" asked McCoy, and Spock raised an eyebrow at the unnecessary question. 

His captain took a deep breath and let it go. "Let's go to your office, Bones . . . Spock." His eyes went from one man to the other, growing less feral only by an incalculable degree.

"That bad, huh?" McCoy continued as they went to the lift.

"No. Well, not good." Then there was no more conversation until they were in Sickbay, where Jim nodded at Nurse Chapel and strode right past her, McCoy and Spock following. In the office, he dropped into a chair and looked up at them. "Sit down, gentlemen."

"I'm getting you a shot first, and me too," said McCoy, turning to his cabinet.

"I'm on duty . . . or I will be."

"It's medicinal." McCoy handed Jim a small glass with a dose of clear liquid in it. Jim, apparently believing the doctor's rationale, took it in a single swallow. Spock had identified the alcohol by its smell and doubted profoundly that it appeared on the manifest of Sickbay's medicaments.

Jim, however, looked down at the glass and up at McCoy, and then said, "Yes, 'medicinal' is the right word."

"Scotty's best batch, he says." McCoy lifted his own glass and sipped, then coughed.

"God help us," said Jim. "We'll have to tell him to stop using -- well, whatever he is using. Get real grain."

"So," McCoy drawled, "tell us. What happened? What's got under your skin?"

"Matt Decker . . ." Jim bit off what he had been going to say.

"Yes, Captain?" Spock prompted, curious. All he knew about Commodore Decker was the information in his public file, including his stint as an instructor at Starfleet Academy when Jim was a cadet there. He could not tell whether Jim considered Decker his friend.

Jim looked not at Spock but back at McCoy, who said, "Oh, go ahead and get whatever it is off your chest, Jim."

"Matt Decker," Jim said slowly, his diction precise, "has a stick so far up his ass that it is poking out the top of his head."

Through his surprise, Spock heard McCoy say, "No, but what do you really think?" and saw that both men were inexplicably grinning.

"Matt Decker," Jim began again, but now it was a game, "eats a book of regulations for breakfast every morning."

"With milk."

"And sliced Starfleet officer on top."

"Not you?" McCoy was incredulous.

"No. Well, I came in for my share of the Decker charm, but first it was his Science officer, just a kid really, Lieutenant Massata. He promotes them so young, Bones."

"You're a fine one to talk about being promoted young." McCoy grinned and raised his glass to his mouth again.

"I was ready. She isn't. She knows it." His mouth quirked a little; Spock saw that he was indeed relaxing, whether the drink had any influence on him or not. "She asked after you, you know, Spock. Read a paper of yours or saw a vid or something, wants your autograph, I think. She must have missed you at the reception. I'd hate to think how embarrassed she would have been if you'd been there when Decker hung her out to dry."

"Then it is as well that I was not," Spock answered.

Jim nodded, looking at the empty glass in his hand, tilting it in the light. "It was a bad moment. She was flustered, misspoke, got her facts wrong, and he reprimanded her right there in the meeting, in front of me -- the captain of another starship -- not to mention her fellow crewmembers."

"Is that what made you mad?" asked McCoy.

"No, mostly I got mad because I told him what I'd found out and he dismissed it. He's above learning anything through anonymous letters and . . . well, he said the source was biased and the information vague. Of course it's vague, I said, if it was definite I'd be acting on it already."

"I bet that went over well," McCoy said. "Especially the part about how you got the information."

Spock found that it disconcerted him to think of the number of people who now knew of Jim's relationship with the Ambassador. He raised his hands, steepled the fingers and then interlaced them -- then, noticing the nervous movement, unfolded them and returned them to his lap. He looked up to find Jim's eyes on him.

"I told him exactly what I told you, Bones," he said, still looking at Spock. "That Ambassador Estellare had gotten into conversation with me and confided in me about those upsetting anonymous letters."

"Yes, I know," McCoy responded, and Spock felt relieved, and newly disturbed at feeling relieved. McCoy went on, "I just suspect Decker, like me, noticed that she waited a few days until you got there to decide to tell a Federation representative. That's not gonna be good for Decker's ego, which from what I've heard needs a lot of feeding."

Jim nodded. "I'd just forgotten about that side of him, Bones, he never showed it at the Academy, or not to me. Or I don't remember it."

"So the reason we're not hearing all this in the briefing room," said McCoy, "is that there's no official problem?"

"Right, so no investigation and no action plan needed." Jim had begun to look angry again.

"And when something blows up on Altair?"

Jim looked at the glass again, tipped it this way and that. "I don't know," he answered. "I get court-martialled for not stopping it?"

"Surely," Spock said almost involuntarily, "that cannot be a plausible response."

"Oh, don't worry, Spock, that ain't gonna happen," said McCoy, and Spock saw that although his words were confident, his face was troubled. "Because Jim's gonna do something dangerous and probably against regulations, and if he gets court-martialled, it'll be for that and not for sitting by while all hell breaks loose. So what'll it be, Jim? Decided yet?"

"No," said Jim, nevertheless putting the glass down on McCoy's desk with a decisive snap. "But I know what I have to do right now, and that is to go cancel the rest of the meetings I set up with the Altairians. By order of Commodore Decker." He stood. "I'll be on the bridge. A nice, official backdrop for my messages."

"Captain." Spock rose too. "Shall I discontinue my research on the goldenwood plantations on Altair Five?"

"No, finish it. The information could still come in handy." Jim was on his way out already, but paused in the door as the comm sounded. When McCoy leaned over and hit the button, Uhura's voice said, "Bridge to Captain Kirk."

"Kirk here." Jim had sprung back to the comm in what seemed a single step.

"We're being contacted by President Jiilau's secretary. The president wants to speak to you."

Jim glanced at McCoy, who backed away from the chair. Then Jim swung around the corner of the desk and sat, saying to Uhura, "I'll take it right here." He gestured for Spock to come around where he also could see the screen, and Spock obeyed.

President Jiilau's office, like the reception hall, backed onto the goldenwood grove and was lit by large windows; in contrast, most of the furnishings appeared to be deep red, especially the high-backed chair in which Jiilau sat. He looked rather small and dim against the raging color until he opened his mouth.

"Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise?" he said in a voice so deep that the speaker buzzed just a little at the end of each sentence.

"Yes, President Jiilau?"

"I have been told that you share my concern about . . . recent communications I have received."

Spock gathered that the president did not trust the security of this connection, and he might well be correct in his suspicion. Jim followed his lead, and said, "As well as communications received by another visitor to your world. I was concerned. I have orders now, however, to terminate this investigation from my end. I was just about to call your Intelligence Agency and cancel the meetings I had asked for."

The president's brows rose, and he was silent for a few seconds. "You must do so, of course, if you are so ordered," he said. "But I believe your overall orders include cooperation with requests from myself and my staff?"

"As far as possible," said Jim a little warily.

"You may be contacted by Intelligence agents in connection with our own investigations; you may answer questions, I trust?"

"Yes." Jim began to smile.

"Good. But my purpose in contacting you is quite separate from your meetings, which by the way our staff can cancel for you, if you wish."

"Thank you, President Jiilau."

"Mine is in fact a personal request."

"It will be my pleasure to do whatever I can for you," Jim said.

"All my life, as long as I can remember," said the president, and his voice was suddenly confiding, its deep richness softened, "I have wished to see the inside of a Federation starship. Now two of them are in orbit above me, and I still have not done so. May I take a tour of your starship, Captain Kirk?"

"President Jiilau, I see no reason why not. I would be happy to show the Enterprise to you."

"You are most diplomatic. Could we perhaps take a very short trip?"

"Is that wise, Mr. President?"

"Within this solar system, of course, Captain Kirk. Surely that is a very little distance for your starship."

"Within this solar system," Jim repeated slowly.

"Yes." The president stared intently from the monitor.

"Perhaps," said Jim, "we could discuss a short flight plan when you are aboard."

"That would undoubtedly be best. I shall look forward to beaming up within the hour, if you are not otherwise occupied."

Jim began to grin. "No, as it happens, now seems a very good time."

"So I thought. One of my staff will contact your quartermaster; is that agreeable?"

"Certainly."

"Then I shall say goodbye for a short while."

"Goodbye, Mr. President; it's an honor to assist you."

Jiilau nodded, and his image vanished.

"Quartermaster?" asked McCoy, which was also Spock's question.

"Well, well, well," Jim said, looking from one of them to the other, nearly laughing. "Yes, Bones, the quartermaster, because they'll need accommodations. Unless I'm very much mistaken, we're taking President Jiilau -- and whoever he decides to bring along -- to Altair 5. An unorthodox mind -- oh, yes, he does have that!"

Spock looked in puzzlement at Jim's delight. "Will Commodore Decker not object?" he asked.

Jim, looking up at him, smiled slowly, with the fascinating look of boyish mischief Spock had not seen for too long. "We'll see, won't we? Eventually."

~~~~~

Aulua Jiilau beamed up with both his spouses, Niu and Strephon, an intern called Akino, and his secretary, Klaos. The Jiilaus carried hand luggage, so they clearly were not intending to leave for a while. Oh, my, Decker's gonna have a cat, McCoy thought. Meanwhile, everybody was making nice: Jiilau and Jim, whom McCoy imagined had not done more than shake hands at the reception, were complimenting each other's successes and measuring each other's eyes as if they were recruiting each other. Spock was chatting with the husband, or anyway doing his Vulcan imitation of chatting, which left McCoy to do his best with the wife. Niu Jiilau was a little woman, thin and ethereal, with enormous eyes and an unexpectedly deep alto voice. Amused, McCoy wondered whether she spoke low in her range to echo her older husband's deck-shaking bass, or whether the sound had something to do with the layers of wooden chokers, dark-stained and glinting, that climbed the curve of her neck.

"Can you tell me," he asked her, "what the devil is going on?"

She raised her chin, staring, and McCoy was surprised at the forceful expression such a small person could command. She shook her head, and her earrings swung and clicked against her chokers. "No," she said.

"No, you can't, or no, you won't?"

"No, Doctor," she repeated.

Strephon Jiilau came up behind her and put his palm on her lower back. She turned her head and gazed up at him.

"Niu, come and see the observation deck. Mr. Spock says the tour starts there."

It was the typical place to begin a ship's tour, but McCoy found it amusing that Spock should bring it up. When they all stood in the dim light looking up and out toward the stars or down and in toward the shuttlecraft bay, McCoy asked the question that had been in his mind the whole way down to Deck 17: "Don't you usually say that this is the most illogical stop on the tour, Spock?"

Spock was in the center of the narrow room, between Niu and Jim, who were seated on one of the ledges in front of the shuttlebay windows, and Strephon who was craning his neck to see Altair 6 through the high-set starport, while President Jiilau stood behind with one hand laid casually on his husband's shoulder. Both men turned to look at Spock.

"It merely seems odd to me," Spock said, unabashed at being the center of attention, "that visitors from a planet invariably want to come here and look back down at the place they have left, and which must be familiar to them, rather than investigate the unfamiliar spaces of the ship, which is surely the overall goal of the tour. But Mr. Jiilau expressed interest in seeing a place with windows, and this is one of the few areas of the ship which fulfils his criterion."

"I confess I didn't expect to find windows anywhere on the starship," said the president. "Now, of course, I understand that it would be a pity not to have access to this view."

"Sensors provide such a view," Spock said, "and it is available at any terminal to those with sufficiently high Security clearance."

"Security clearance," repeated Strephon, staring out the port, with something in his voice that McCoy could not quite identify. Strain? Anger? Sadness? 

In a lower tone, though not quite so softly as to make it absolutely a private moment, the president asked, "Why did you ask for windows, Strephon?"

"Because without them, these metal rooms are too much like the prison," said the younger man, clearly, publicly, and with pain.

The whole group stood frozen. Then Niu slipped down from the ledge where she sat and crossed to her husbands, stepping between Strephon and the port. Her head did not clear the bottom of the transparent panel, and her face, as she turned it up to look at him, was level with his breastbone. "Look again, Strephon," she said in that oboe's voice. "Look down. That is the important thing, that globe, the home of hope."

"You are not looking," Strephon answered.

"No. I don't need a window. I will see it from every room in the ship because I see it in my heart. And," she smiled a little and disclosed a charming dimple whose existence McCoy would never have guessed, "because I could not see it through this high port if I tried."

Strephon smiled then, and smoothed her hair. "My wife," he said. "You are such an unexpected gift. Prison did me that favor, to bring me Aulua and then, with freedom, you." The president reached across and gripped his wife's shoulder, holding both spouses within the scope of his arms.

Again it was only partly a private gesture. McCoy marveled at how the threesome balanced intimacy and performance so effortlessly that watchers questioned neither their sincerity nor their awareness of the audience. It was like being in the front row seats for a very finely acted drama.

That instinct for good theater obviously ran strong in Aulua Jiilau, who let go of his spouses after a moment and turned, that intense gaze focussing on Jim. "The home of hope, Niu calls our planet, but for the moment, hope for me is on Altair 5," he said. "I must go there now, today, before official news agencies hear of it or the unofficial information source on my staff gives the news to his or her contact." He looked apologetically at Klaos and Akido. "In fact, my apprehensions are why my staff members must rely on your generosity: I could give them no warning and no time to pack lest my true destination be known."

"Why?" asked Jim simply.

McCoy had to give President Jiilau points for not being sidetracked by semantics. Out of all the possible references of Jim's question, Jiilau chose the one that would get most directly where he apparently wanted to go. "I have never really believed in delegating important tasks," he said, taking the few steps which separated them and sitting down next to Jim. "And, from the stories I have heard, neither do you. I have gotten, through channels into which I won't take you, a message from someone among the terrorists who have been threatening me, someone who is influential but unable to turn the tide of the movement he thought he was leading. He is willing to meet with me, to negotiate, to give me information about the others. I can't send anyone else to this meeting. I must go myself. Boridi -- the name he gives -- will not meet with anyone on my staff or any police or Intelligence officer."

"Does it matter so much what he wants or who he says he'll meet, if you know where he is?" asked Jim. "A team could retrieve him, and interrogate him -- that's standard procedure on most worlds, I'd say." It was too much to believe, McCoy reflected, that Jim really had learned sense enough not to go straight toward the most dangerous option: he must be playing devil's advocate, or he figured he'd save the really foolhardy nonsense for himself.

"I could lie to him," the president admitted, distaste on his fine features. "I could take his confidence and abuse it. I could be unworthy of my position and my truest self. But I do not plan to do any of those things."

Jim looked at him with approval plainly written on his own face. Niu was very still, and Strephon's gaze moved from one of the men opposite to the other. Then his eyes, like McCoy's, went to Spock. McCoy wondered what the younger man saw -- he himself could tell, from nearly two years of experience, that Spock was about to object to just about everything he'd been hearing.

"May I recap?" Spock asked politely. "Your correspondent admits to being a terrorist; he claims not to control other terrorists but to 'influence' them, and he demands that you leave your security arrangements and, indeed, your whole planet in order to put yourself completely at his mercy, at which point he has given you his word of honor to betray those he has been working with. Have I understood correctly that this seems an acceptable plan to you?"

President Jiilau looked up at Spock with no expression whatever, until Akino shifted restlessly; Spock, of course, neither looked away nor showed any discomfort. When Jiilau spoke, it was to Jim. "Your officers do not, I gather, share your skill with diplomacy."

"I wouldn't say that," Jim answered. "My officers do their jobs, which include pointing out drawbacks of proposed plans of action."

"And this plan," McCoy put in his oar, hoping he'd someday hear the last of having agreed with Spock, "has plenty of drawbacks."

"I trust Boridi," said the president.

"Why?" This time Spock asked..

Another expressionless silence. President Jiilau gazed past Spock at Strephon, and at last it was the younger man who spoke: "We knew him in prison."

Spock asked, "Was he trustworthy then?"

"I never trusted him," Strephon said.

"You never fought him," the president responded. Strephon's eyes fell. Niu took a step forward but did not speak.

"I would have -- " Strephon began, and McCoy discovered that he was at the end of his tolerance for the Jiilaus' family psychodrama.

"Look, what's in the past is hardly the point," he said. "The point now is that you, Mr. President, are very important and that this smells like a trap. Even if this Boridi is sincere, can you assume that less trustworthy people are not going to know that he has arranged a meeting with you? Why in the world do you think your Security people would have taken such a dim view of your plan that you had to sneak on to a starship? Hell, you're practically a stowaway."

"Bones," said Jim in moderate reproof.

"'The point' -- the real point -- is in danger of being lost," said President Jiilau. "I did not ask for a committee meeting to help me make a decision. I have made it. In any case I am not accustomed to soliciting the opinions of random Starfleet officers. What I have asked you for is transport, not commentary. If you find yourself unable to give it, very well, but consider the dangers of not following through when I have taken such care to evade my watchers this time."

~~~~~

"You leave me little choice," said Jim with that mildness that Spock knew could burst into anger or shift into a smile.

"I meant to leave you none," answered President Jiilau steadily.

"Captain, this plan is illogical," Spock insisted. He stepped nearer to where Jim was seated, staring down at him. Intense apprehension, impossible to explain, rose in Spock. Jiilau's utter lack of reason in this matter was not the only source of his disquiet; Jim was wearing one of his more reckless expressions, but even that was not all. Without data, without logical argument, there was nothing he could do to alter the decision he saw forming on Jim's face, and there was no way to stop whatever private agenda President Jiilau was pursuing. 

"We've done riskier things than this, Spock, and made them succeed." Jim had decided. 

President Jiilau added, "As have I," and Niu flinched slightly.

"What does 'success' mean in this context?" Spock tried again.

"Do you know," asked President Jiilau, "what my advisors would count as success? My generals? Their idea of an acceptable plan is to locate Boridi's people and raze the area. In fact, one reason I prefer to do without my own security forces is that they are responsible to the Army, and in spite of my time as a general, I am not at all sure that they do not find me expendable. If I had tried to meet Boridi officially, both he and I would probably die of it, and the war that has just ended could ignite again."

"As it well may," Spock reminded them, "if you are kidnapped, injured, or killed in an unofficial meeting."

"Perhaps." Aulua Jiilau leaned forward, turning the glare of his charisma fully on Spock: his voice rumbled; his eyes were bright -- but Spock was not greatly affected. The most charismatic being he knew was seated nearby, relaxed, resting in the decision by which all of them must abide. And he depended on Spock; he had said so. Jiilau's deep voice added now, "In any case, you may set any perimeter guards, take any precautions you like. I know Starfleet will not fire on the defenseless."

"Or even upon the defended, unless we have due cause," said Spock coolly. "We would take our best security precautions with or without your permission. But we have so little information on which to base our plans that I must still protest."

"Your concern is noted, Mr. Spock," Jim cut in, ending the discussion. "We can work out the details of our precautions on the way to Altair 5. Meanwhile, Mr. President, if you really want to see the Enterprise, we should move along."

On the way out, Akino clutched at the sleeve of Spock's uniform, delaying him. "Is this meeting really going to put Aulua -- I mean, President Jiilau -- in danger?"

"Acute danger, in my judgement," Spock answered.

"Well, do something! Can't you? Fix it? Prevent it? There's got to be something you Federation people can do!"

Spock merely looked at him, reluctant to repeat what he had just been saying so fruitlessly.

The young man threw his hands into the air and stepped back, scorn and fear mingled on his face. "If you're just going to stand there...!"

"No, indeed," said Spock, with ordinary restraint, "I am going to join the rest of the ship's tour, and I suggest you do the same."

They did, and found Jim just finishing his instructions to the bridge over the wall comm in the corridor -- without surprise, Spock realized that they were already leaving orbit on their way to Altair 5. They also stopped to drop off Klaos and Akino in the quarters that had been prepared for them, with extra computer access, so that they could begin sending the appropriate messages to Altair 6 and coping with the replies and other correspondence. The Jiilaus saw the Auxiliary Bridge, some portions of Engineering, an assortment of recreation facilities, the Chemistry and Botany labs, and the Arboretum. There, the party separated and walked the narrow paths between tables and tubs crowded with greenery. McCoy and Strephon remained near the door of the big room, chatting idly. Spock found himself beside Niu Jiilau.

"Does this not seem odd to you?" she asked him.

"In what way?" he responded.

"As a reminder of a planet's surface -- a type of greenhouse or garden -- in space."

"Its recreational use is perhaps illogical. A great deal of what my shipmates do for recreation is illogical."

"What do you do?" She looked up at him with wide brown eyes.

Uncharmed, he did not immediately reply.

"I am a little bored," she added, one hand brushing the leaves of the nearest bush, as they walked past it, "and very apprehensive. Please speak to me of something . . . else. What do you do?"

Spock, son of a diplomat, answered, "I perform on the Vulcan ka'thyra; sometimes I choose to practice in the recreation room. Sometimes I accompany Lieutenant Uhura, who is a talented singer and musician. I play chess.” When she nodded, he asked, "You know the game?"

"I know of it. I have rarely played. Strephon does, and Aulua . . . With whom do you play?"

Spock paused, and she looked up questioningly, and he proceeded. "I have programmed the computer to play chess at my own ability level. And the captain and I . . . have frequently played chess." They had not done so since four days before the onset of Spock's pon farr.

She smiled. "Aulua says that he learned to know Strephon's mind and heart across the chessboard. Has your captain learned yours? Or you, his?"

Spock looked down at the top of her head, reflecting that if there was a subject he would not by any means choose to discuss with the Jiilaus, it was his relationship with Jim. "Captain Kirk," he said, "is a talented strategist, and I have learned a great deal from observing his chess game. He has a clear sense of the potential costs of a given gambit which President Jiilau would do well to emulate." This perhaps stretched the truth, as Spock judged Jim's game to be as bold and intuitive -- not to say reckless -- as his command style.

Niu's step quickened; she did not look at the chrysanthemums on either side, or react to their bitter, musky scent. Her hands clenched into fists. "Mr. Spock," she said in clipped tones, "Aulua does nothing without understanding its potential costs. He does not risk himself in ignorance. His bravery is not foolish."

"Indeed?" Spock said without emphasis.

"Yes," she insisted. "He has plans for every contingency. If your captain had denied him transport, if Boridi had refused to meet at all . . . if, now, he should fail to convince Boridi to give his information -"

"If he should die?" Spock asked.

"Yes. Even then. He knows how the media will react, how we may lessen the risk of war -- yes! He is a great man, Mr. Spock. I love him, but I would not follow him only for love. I believe in him. I trust him to find the way. He is my leader." She looked up at him again, standing under the spindly sprays of an orchid, its shadow across her face. "I think you know just what I mean," she said.

Spock looked at the tracings of darker gray on her skin, like scars. He knew that Jim stood not far away in the direction they were going, with the president, near the rose bushes. He knew without looking -- or rather, he could not stop checking for Jim's location with his peripheral vision, listening for his movements or his voice below any nearer sounds, so whenever they were in the same area he always knew where Jim was. Since pon farr, when everything and nothing had changed.

"Yes," he said to Niu.

~~~~~

Jim watched Spock talk to Niu Jiilau with the oddest sensation that he knew what they were saying, though they were out of earshot. He often thought, for all Spock's Vulcan reticence, that his gestures and stance gave away his thoughts about as much as anyone else's. Jim rarely found his first officer hard to read. For instance, not long ago Niu had asked something that Spock found intrusive. Now she had said something that fascinated and perhaps even moved him. They stood nearly under one of the arched buttresses that supported the ceiling, and the pinkish grow-light there came in patches through the struts, weirdly highlighting Spock's hair and his shoulder.

Jim wished, briefly but sharply, that Spock would look up.

"My wife interests your officer," President Jiilau's low voice rumbled.

Jim thought it would be grotesque if Aulua Jiilau became jealous of Spock. Grotesquely wrong and deeply embarrassing. "Your wife is our guest," he said.

"Niu is a biochemist," said the president. "She has made a special study of goldenwood and is conversant with the new bioengineering developments in its cultivation."

This sounded like part of a media briefing; Jim waited for the president to give him the clue that would make sense of this conversation. Instead, Jiilau turned and took a spray of miniature roses carefully between finger and thumb, lifting it to his face to inhale the fresh smell of the small blossoms and new leaves. "Boridi," he said very casually, "suggests a meeting place in one of the experimental plantations, in fact the one in which the newest mature strain of goldenwood is growing."

Jim assumed, from his manner, that this information must be controversial somehow, but he needed Spock to explain it. He looked warily at the president, still enjoying the scent of the plant, and said, "We'll need specific coordinates." On second thought, Jim decided it would be wise to rough out the security plan just between the two of them, first. "We'll set a security perimeter, and depending on the area we should be able to put our people in sight of each other. Beyond that, road-blocks for ground vehicles. Shuttlecraft on flyover -- "

"Stop!" Jiilau abandoned the roses abruptly. "Boridi will never agree to come to a site flooded with Starfleet personnel!"

What happened to "set any security precautions you wish"? Jim wondered, but decided the better part of valor was silence. Yes, definitely a good thing McCoy wasn't nearby. Jim cleared his throat and said mildly, "Mr. President, we must guard your safety."

"Captain, if Boridi refuses to meet me, there is no point in assuring my safety."

Jim could only shake his head in bafflement.

"I fought to hold this office for one reason," the president went on, "one reason only. And that was to make right the relations between Altair 6 and Altair 5. My presidency and my life are as nothing in comparison."

"I can't hold your life so cheaply," Jim said. "If you chose to approach me because you thought I disdained ordinary safety . . . " He paused, and shook his head again.

"No," President Jiilau said. "I never approached Captain Chang because the time was not yet right. I trust you agree that between you and Commodore Decker, the choice was obvious."

"Matt Decker is a fine officer, and a friend of mine," Jim protested.

President Jiilau smiled slightly and looked away, across the Arboretum, in silence.

Jim said, "We can sweep the area ahead of time for traps and third parties. Then we could vacate for a set period of time so that Boridi can arrive. Then we can reset the perimeter and roadblocks, start the shuttlecraft patrols."

President Jiilau did not respond, perhaps because Spock and Niu had just reached them; Jim smiled at Spock, knowing he would have overheard most of the negotiation, and said, "Mr. Spock will tell us that the odds of success are still far too low."

"The risk that Boridi will himself bring weapons or reinforcements is 47.8%," Spock said on cue. "There is a 62.9% risk that associates or enemies will follow him closely enough to evade our initial sweep, and a 15.4% risk that anyone will evade our security forces once they are in place."

"How do you compute your statistics, and what are you basing them on?" asked Niu skeptically.

Jim bit his lower lip, amused, thinking how often he had wanted to know the same thing. On the other hand, it clearly behooved him to support his officer. "Mr. Spock's predictions are uncannily accurate, however he arrives at the percentages in which he expresses them," he said, but couldn't resist another sidelong look at Spock, thinking, even if you make them up! -- which I've often thought you do -- and almost believed Spock could hear the thoughts, for he looked disconcerted.

He recovered quickly, though, and said, "President Jiilau, do you refuse to be more closely guarded? To take guards with you, as we normally would do ourselves in similar negotiations? Or to vouch for one or two of our ship's officers who could then accompany you to the meeting?"

"I must go alone," said Jiilau stubbornly.

"You will at least carry a communicator?" Spock pressed him. "We will maintain a transporter lock on you at all times so that you need only tell us to beam you up -- we could give you an innocuous code word."

"I will carry the device if you insist," said the president, "but I doubt you will be able to maintain the lock."

"Why not?" asked Jim.

But it was Niu who answered. "You're meeting in New Grove? Aulua?" She turned to Jim, then to Spock, one hand a little outstretched as if she were pleading with them. "The new variety -- it uses different minerals, and metabolizes more -- goldenwood has always been difficult to use sensors on. For firewatch, even pest control . . . even life forms are hard to sense. The new strain is worse."

Spock nodded in agreement. "The literature points out the degree to which goldenwood was always sensor-resistant, and of course the effect is stronger as the quantity of wood increases."

"Recalibrate the sensors," Jim said.

"I shall do so," Spock replied. "The process would of course be more effective if I knew the chemical composition of the new strain."

Niu spread her hands helplessly. "An industrial secret," she said.

Jim thought of Rachandra, who was a collector of industrial secrets if he had ever met one. He wondered if their agreement over the anonymous letters would seem to her to reasonably include other information vital to resolving this situation, as she clearly felt her interests were threatened.

Silence had fallen; he looked up and found Spock's eyes on him, and his spirits lifted as they had in the observation lounge, and in Bones' office after first speaking to Jiilau. As they usually did when he could see his way ahead, could do something, and had Spock's help to do it. "Mr. President," Jim turned and got down to it, "please contact Boridi, negotiate for the security plans we've been discussing, and get the coordinates of the meeting place." A pause. "Will you?"

The dark head bent graciously, and the gray lips spread slowly into a smile: "I will."


	4. Act III: Out of the Frying Pan

Spock had little time to recalibrate the sensors, so after a discussion with Sulu about the approach and orbit, he concentrated on only the sensor bank that would be trained on New Grove while Jiilau was there. He and Scott worked on it while the president and his secretary and intern went through correspondence -- and, somehow, got Boridi's permission for those highly compromised security arrangements -- and Jim attempted to contact Rachandra Estellare. For more information about the specific biochemistry of the new goldenwood strain, of course.

While his hands worked, while his voice spoke to his fellow crewmembers, Spock again thought through his recent reactions to events. He was dissatisfied with them, and had been since the previous night, when he had gotten the Transporter Chief's message that the captain and his guest had beamed aboard. It was only routine that the first officer should be notified when the captain boarded; it was none of Spock's business that Jim had brought a guest with him. But he had not been able to stop himself from paying attention to the ambient sounds of the ship, from noticing the low voices in the corridor and the sound of Jim's door . . . and then the other sounds.

It was not the first time he had overheard Jim having sex in his quarters, but now that he knew the touch of Jim's skin, the way his head fell back when he was deeply aroused and the sound of his voice vibrating through both their skins and echoing in Spock's own chest cavity -- now to hear him so far away and with someone else was not tolerable. It was not logical to stay and try to ignore what he knew could not be ignored. So he had gone to Rec Room 1. Even there, Spock could not meditate, and had never managed to solve the chess problem he had called up from the computer library before Jim had found him there.

Jim had smelled freshly washed. Why must Spock notice such things? Why must he know where Jim was in the room, overhear everything he said? 

Why must he feel for Jim what apparently Jim did not return? It was not logical to do so.

He could not stop.

Meanwhile, however, the recalibration proceeded unevenly. Test-runs for the sensors revealed that the new settings created an erratic malfunction. Scott muttered under his breath and left the bridge to physically check the relays where the malfunction seemed to be focussed; Spock continued to run programming checks and rechecks. Jim had recorded a message for Ambassador Estellare and had left the bridge, taking Uhura with him, to devise some sort of entertainment for the Jiilaus.

Spock took his usual satisfaction from working with the computer. When it ran well, it was like an enormous extension of his mind: a touch here and there on the controls, a word or two, and from the earplug interface or viewer came a flood of information which sometimes amazed him with its beauty. Even working with a malfunction or an incomplete program had its pleasure, however, as he made each slight change and saw the predicted or unpredicted result. I think you will do this, he said silently to the computer, and it did -- something else, now, and where had that error crept in? Another overtaxed relay, he suspected, but where was the programming glitch that had overtaxed it?

The ship's phasers had been set on stun and blanketed the area in which President Jiilau's meeting was to take place. The rest of ship's sensors could not find life readings, aside from what appeared to be animals of various kinds. Spock felt, however, that one or two humanoids might be there, especially if they had devised some technological means of taking special advantage of the goldenwood's sensor distortion . . . Spock pulled his mind away from that topic of speculation with some effort, and ordered security teams to the areas where sensor readings were uncertain. The first two teams found a local form of deer, and the tricorder readings they took were helpful in eliminating some of the other anomalous life signs. Others found nothing, and also took readings for further recalibration.

He tried his recalibrated sensors, while Doctor McCoy looked on. His presence on the bridge, while unusual in Jim's absence, was explained at some length as a retreat from the needs of diplomatic hospitality, and Spock had agreed that McCoy's tact had better not be put to any further strain. Now, McCoy looked over his shoulder at the readings and said, "Is that the best you can do after a couple hours' work? Here I thought you could make the computers do anything, Spock. You're disappointing me."

"Forests," said Spock, "are hardly chemically homogenous at the best of times, Doctor, and this is a highly unusual forest."

"What's that?" McCoy pointed.

Spock took an even breath, not quite a sigh, willing to seem irritated with McCoy although his real reaction was to the recalcitrant sensors. "It may be a foreign substance, or it may be a variation in the trees' normal growth, or it may be some mutation of the experimental strain. You do realize, Doctor, that we seldom need to use the sensors to do more than identify trees as trees; rarely is this kind of painstaking analysis necessary."

"You're saying it might be . . . something dangerous?"

"There is a 34.57% chance that it is some sort of toxin or chemical weapon."

"That's too high, Spock."

"I agree. But I suspect President Jiilau will not."

"Yes. Or Jim."

"Perhaps not."

"Well. What's the next step?"

"I will report the sensor findings, such as they are. We will keep watch on these particular areas, and the maps in the shuttlecraft computers will be marked accordingly."

"You got the OK for the shuttlecraft?"

"The flyovers may only start after Boridi has arrived, when we set up the perimeter guard."

McCoy looked to the side, with that aimless movement by which he expressed frustration with an absent person, and then looked back. "Even I can tell this 'security' is pretty much makework, with the holes we've had to leave in it. You know Jim might be held responsible. That court-martial business might not be just a joke. If something goes wrong."

Spock wanted to deny it but could not. He could only say, "We have logged everything. There is ample evidence of the captain's efforts to make this as safe a mission as possible."

"As safe as possible is pretty damn dangerous in this case."

Spock went on trying to make it less so, with little result and no further information from Ambassador Estellare, who had not yet returned Jim's call. The time of the meeting arrived; President Jiilau beamed down, closely followed by the bulk of the ship's Security force; Jim came up to the bridge to watch and wait, and occasionally to look over Spock's shoulder much as McCoy had done. He was sitting on the railing behind the science station when Uhura said, "Captain, receiving transmission from Altair 6, from Ambassador Estellare."

"Put it on audio," said Jim.

But Uhura said, almost apologetically, "It's . . . text, Captain."

Jim looked surprised. "Well, then upload it and put it on screen here," gesturing to the central Science screen above Spock's viewer.

The screen blinked on and filled with a font too small to read from Jim's position; Spock touched a few buttons and adjusted it. Spock began to read but very soon realized that this was not information about the biochemistry of goldenwood. It was an anonymous letter, addressed to the ambassador, describing in some detail the location of President Jiilau's meeting with Boridi -- in fact, the location was described in greater detail than Jiilau had told Jim when they were setting the security perimeter. The letter spoke of an assassination attempt, though vaguely.

"We've got to get to Jiilau," said Jim. "Can you pinpoint the coordinates from this?"

"Not precisely. But I can use the descriptions and the communicator trace to track him."

"Good. Let's go. Sulu, you have the conn."

Jim was passing the Communications station already. Spock followed, after pressing a few buttons to send the information where he could download it into a tricorder when they reached the transporter room. Jim was waiting impatiently in the lift; Spock could feel the energy roll off him like scent as the door closed and the lift dropped.

~~~~~

Jim and Spock walked among the goldenwood trees, up a logging road, which Jim was a little surprised to find unpaved. Wheel ruts told of groundcars that had been here; undergrowth broken and bent at an even calf-height on either side showed where the wider beds of the hovertrucks had passed. Leaves had fallen into the road almost as thickly as beneath the trees; their boots scuffed through layers of dead foliage, and the fermented smell of the leaves was in each breath. The air seemed very dry for all the pungent, bitter-edged scent; there was little undergrowth. The trunks around them were dark and seamed, the leaves above and below all yellow and brown, glossy and fragrant and whispering. Occasionally Spock or Jim would tread on a fallen branch, which cracked or turned under foot, sometimes raising a surprising length and stirring up the leaf-fall with a rustle like a digging animal. These things spoke; both men were silent.

Spock was a little ahead, glancing down at his tricorder and up at the road, back and forth. Suddenly he stopped, in a shaft of yellow light, his head tipped a little back, very still. The light fell along the curve of his ear and Jim began to smile in spite of himself, opened his mouth to speak though he hardly knew what he meant to say --

But Spock, dropping the tricorder to his side, suddenly swerved off the road altogether and strode away, more and more swiftly through the unmarked woods. Jim went after him, calling "Spock?" and then smelled the change in the air. Muskier. Sharper.

Smoke.

In Jiilau's direction? Jim was willing to bet it was, from Spock's behavior. Pulling his communicator out as he began to run, keeping Spock in sight but not trying to catch up, Jim called into it, "Enterprise, Kirk here, come in," and heard Uhura's cool voice in answer.

"Enterprise here, Captain."

"Advise perimeter guards and shuttlecraft crews that there may be a fire here. What do sensors say?"

"Checking, sir." A brief pause; Jim ran on without much sense of progress. The trees all looked alike as they passed, and the smell -- but it was getting stronger. Oh, yes, that was a puff of real smoke. Jim shook his head and wiped his eyes with his free hand, the other still holding the open communicator. "Enterprise --" he gasped.

"Yes, sir, we have a forest fire on sensors. Not yet a large one, but you're headed right into it. I'm signaling all security teams to move toward it -- toward you -- "

Spock ran up a ridge and stopped; Jim stopped beside him, and for a long, appalled moment, they both stood looking down a slope and across a field cleared to stumps and grass. They had found the fire. 

It ran crazily along the tops of the trees, leaping from one tree to another, running down the trunks or dropping in bright falling stars to the ground. Smoke puffed upward in large, ballooning clouds, white and gray and black. Strangely, the fire burned not only in the yellows and reds Jim would have expected but in a wild fireworks' rainbow, and the flames' growing roar was constantly interrupted with pops and whistles and sparks, and occasionally with real explosions. While hardly an experienced firefighter, Jim had seen tapes from time to time, and did not remember anything exactly like this. 

His communicator chirped, and he opened it. "Captain, all security forces checked in and updated. Will you rendezvous with them? Or beam up?"

"Neither until we know where the president and Boridi are. How did the fire start? Where? When?"

"Uncertain, sir," said Uhura; "we just registered it," but Jim knew that was no comfort. A fire could get well established in a very short time, and Jiilau could easily have been caught in it. If he and Boridi had not been on the spot where it started.

"You've notified the planetary fire control authorities too?"

"Yes, sir. They'll probably beam in right about where you are now." 

Jim could already see the shuttles closing in, beginning to spray the flames from above.

"This is the spot to rendezvous. Tell the security teams."

"Yes, Captain."

"Captain," said Spock, echoing Uhura so closely that by the time Jim had registered the word, Spock was already moving. "I see him!"

Was there a dark figure moving in the smoke? Could Spock tell from this distance who it was? Jim ran as hard as he could, but Spock's legs were longer and he maintained his lead. This, Jim reflected in one of those moments of lucid thought that were merely distracting in a crisis, was a crazy thing to do. Yet it never occurred to him to order Spock back. Neither of them had protective clothing or firefighting equipment, but neither could stand still and watch Jiilau burn.

Now they were running through spots of fire, jumping from side to side to avoid flames, trying to pull the overheated air into their lungs and keep their eyes clear enough to see where they were going. Now Jim too could see the humanoid shape ahead, stumbling, arms over its face. Jim looked around through heat haze and smoke and falling water from the shuttles. His eyes were streaming and his face kept being spattered with hot water, but even when he pulled his sleeve across his eyes and blinked hard, he could not see anything helpful, not so much as a large enough patch of clear ground for the man to roll on to put out the fires in his hair and clothes. Spock reached the figure, grabbed it around the waist and began to turn; everything had slipped into slow motion, and the change in momentum seemed to take seconds. Jim leaned back, slowing to turn himself, and felt for his communicator but did not pull it from its fastening, realizing he would not hear the chirp over the noise of the fire.

Something dropped from Jiilau's hands to the ground, and he began to struggle in Spock's arms, reaching after it. Jim lunged forward again to get it. Spock passed him and his mouth opened over Jiilau's shoulder. Jim had the illusion that he was outrunning the sound of Spock's voice. He bent down and grabbed blindly, scrabbled between hot wet leaves and found smooth edges whose hard shape he did not take time to identify, ran back while he was still pulling his torso upright. And there was Spock, in front of him, tall as another tree, flickering red and orange, stretching his arms upward, and now the shout was audible: "Jim!"

Out of the air, Spock caught a burning tree-limb in his bare hands. Caught, held, his arms bending, taking the weight and pushing it back up, away -- throwing it to the side with all the strength of those Vulcan arms and a horrible grimace on his face. Jim, his feet still moving, felt the vibration and burning in his own throat as he shouted "No!" and then without pause they were both running again, back into the field, out of the fire, diving and rolling as soon as they saw unburned grass.

Everything hurt: the air in his nose and throat, the impact of the ground under his shoulder, head, hip, legs -- he rolled over twice and stopped, the hard edge of the object he had picked up underneath him. More noise above him -- shuttlecraft? How badly Jim wanted to lie there, for McCoy to be bending over him with a med sensor and for it all to be over. But the roar of the fire was still in his ears, and what had Spock done with Jiilau, anyway? And the fire would find them, perhaps before the security teams did. And Spock -- Jim tried to sit up and got about halfway, pulled the communicator from his belt, flicked it open and could only groan into it.

Thank god, Jim thought as the world around him began to sparkle, so a groan appeared to be good enough.

He found himself lying down on the transporter pad, and turned his head to see Spock's hunched shoulder -- oh, my god, black -- t-shirt? -- and Jiilau's still form beyond that. There was a thin whine, a kind of low scream, in the room, or was it more than one? Everything was pain: he felt the flames around him though his eyes said they were safe. The scream might have been his own. He couldn't seem to tell. He turned his head again and saw a shape loom over him, heard a hiss and went gratefully down into unconsciousness.

~~~~~~

Things made a bit more sense when he woke up in Sickbay. He was full of painkiller, and McCoy was grumbling. Business as usual. 

"...half the security guards in the quadrant down there with you and another of the craziest damn bungee-jumping glory hounds I have ever seen, and you still manage to get away long enough to..."

"Good to see you, Bones," he said in a raspy voice he almost couldn't recognize and that hurt him amazingly.

"Oh, so you're back among the living?" The gentleness of McCoy's hand on his shoulder belied, as always, the rough voice and the angry frown. "No, try not to talk. Let me just run this dermal restoration and tell you what happened, since I'm sure that's what you're gonna want to ask about." The hum of the device was in the air, Jim belatedly noticed, and strange sensations were travelling across his chest and up his neck.

"The fire's under control. The shuttles and the Altair 5 natives are managing it as well as can be expected. There'll be reports from both. Ask Uhura for them later. Far as they can tell, may have been this Boridi fellow Jiilau was meeting who started the fire. That's not real clear yet -- kind of a puzzle given the type of fire it was, the firefighters say -- and Boridi's still missing. We'll have to see if Jiilau can tell us anything when he wakes up. If he does. He's the worst off of the three of you, naturally. Anyway, the things you had in your hands were data disks, boxed, and we've kept 'em . . . they belong to Jiilau? No, Jim, just nod."

He nodded. McCoy turned his attention to Jim's right hand, where the tingle of the restoration began at the very tips of his fingers and moved slowly up toward his wrist.

"OK, the disks seem to be functional, but they can wait. You know they can," this with a particularly evil glare, "so just get used to it. If you're not good, I'll beam 'em over to Constellation the way Decker wants."

Jim was surprised into laughter, another bad idea. He wheezed, and McCoy held him down and cursed him out until he stopped.

". . . made me drop it! All right now, just lie still, dammit! You do want to be able to use this new skin for something?" Jim nodded meekly. "Yes, you can imagine how Decker is carrying on. Fortunately, he's blowing off to Scotty, who is just doing that Edinburgh granite act. No, sir, yes, sir, I'll pass your concerns on to Captain Kirk, sir. Now. When you went back for the data, Spock apparently threw Jiilau clear of the fire -- "

"Threw -- ?"

"Shut up, Captain! And then came back for you. It wasn't a good idea, but then there weren't many options. Jiilau had a few broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. We fixed them. It's the burns that are the real problem, and he had them when you found him. We've got him in one of the ICU rooms . . . it's too early to tell. We've been talking to doctors on Altair 6. They'll be as ready as they can be when we get there. Anyway, how do you think you would have dodged that branch if Spock hadn't been there?"

"- hands -"

"Will you shut your mouth! Yes, he hurt his hands pretty badly, and his forearms. And his uniform tunic was burned through in places." McCoy worked in silence for a few seconds, but just as Jim started to brace himself to speak, McCoy began again. "Third degree burns, Jim. We've put temporary dressings on the arms, but he's still unconscious. We'll have to see." McCoy paused again, and the expression on his face sent a chill down Jim's spine because it was so full of compassion and anxiety. "He'll survive. I'm sure of it. And use the hands. I think." 

Jim's chest cavity seemed suddenly empty, and very cold. He swallowed, breathed deeply, but it was not much help.

"And you came through with your usual luck. Superficial burns, first and a couple second degree. A few treatments with this thing, and you'll be good as new. I'll just do your other arm," he moved around the end of the biobed, checking the control panel of the machine as he passed it, and began again on Jim's left hand, "and then your throat and you'll be free for bed rest. And that is exactly what you will take, if I have to confine you to quarters or restrain you to this bed."

Jim nodded, and then closed his eyes. McCoy took the hint and finished the skin restoration in silence, then sprayed him with the antiseptic and rubbed it into the new skin with a sterile cloth. The touch was soothing but Jim was not comforted. He lay in the dark behind his eyelids and could not get away from the images he saw there.

Spock's hands. Thousands of times he had seen them, the long, elegant fingers, so flexible and so strong; on computer terminals, on the consoles of the Bridge; handling tools with such precision, his lyre with such sensitivity, living creatures -- even experimental animals -- with such gentleness. His hands steepled in front of his face as he thought. His hands moving over the chessboard, hovering above the pieces, settling on one.

The touch of those hands. 

McCoy finished rubbing down the new skin, and Jim didn't notice; it took a long time for him to realize that he was alone. He lifted his arm and rested his wrist on his forehead, then lifted it again, opened his eyes, and looked at the blotchy new skin. When he put his wrist down, McCoy was standing beside the biobed with a different medical instrument and a tongue depressor.

"Open wide," he said, and put the instrument slowly down Jim's throat while Jim controlled his gag reflex as best he could. This kept him busy for a minute or so, and when McCoy took the thing back out, his throat felt peculiar, hollowed out, but better. 

McCoy touched his neck lightly. "Don't talk any time you don't have to. Rest your throat for a while," he said. "I have an inhalant for you, too, and a cream to put on later." He handed Jim a standard black t-shirt. "Why don't you go take a look at Spock while I get it? He's in the nearest private ICU." And he turned away before Jim could try to speak.

So Jim sat up carefully and pulled the shirt on, feeling the painkillers in his head but needing the real sight of Spock after all those guilt-ridden mental images. He slid down from the bed, braced himself, and walked into the corridor, and then into Spock's ICU.

Immediately a wall of heat almost overpowered him, and all his new skin throbbed. The air here still smelled remotely smoky, scorched; the lights were even lower than in Sickbay in general, so the only real light was coming from the readout panel. Even that was dim, and Jim tried not to look, knowing that the readouts would not mean what they seemed to. Nurse Chapel, seated next to the biobed, rose as he came in. "Captain," she said, half a question. Her blond hair and sweat-beaded skin glimmered.

"Just - a short visit," said Jim, and discovered how weak and hoarse his voice still was.

"Yes, of course."

They both looked down at Spock.

Jim knew that the position he lay in meant nothing: the biobeds were even narrower than the regulation-size bunks, and there was no room for sprawling even if Spock normally slept that way, which Jim doubted. But he seemed so lifeless, so swollen and dark, like a corpse, laid out with his forearms across his body, and those forearms were so heavily wrapped in medical dressings that the shapes of his hands could not be seen. ...use the hands. I think. McCoy's voice echoed in Jim's head.

"Nurse," he said slowly, "did you . . . see his hands?"

"Yes," she answered, and the expression on her face said that she thought her captain did not want to know the details. But, damn it, he needed to know. He stared until she went on.

"Everything was," and she paused slightly, "intact. But the skin was badly scorched. Two of the fingers on one hand and three on the other were fused together. One of his arms . . . stuck to the transporter platform." 

Jim closed his eyes, then forced them open again. The bright green, burned Spock was still there. 

"He made this . . . sound," said Chapel, now clearly reliving it, "just a small sound, I wouldn't have heard it over the one President Jiilau was making, but I was helping to lift him." She paused. "He stuck to my hand, too." She shook her head, shuddered slightly, pulled herself together. "Captain, I think we'll have to do a debridement, that's a surgery to take off the dead tissue. Sometimes it involves . . . if the dead areas . . . we might lose some fingers."

Jim said nothing for a while, and she let him just stand there.

"And the good news?" he asked at last, his throat hurting, hearing that there was none of the captainly detachment in his voice that he had been trying for.

She put a damp hand on his arm, and he almost could not bear the sight of it, whole and pale. "I couldn't see any bone," she said starkly, and those were the words that stuck in his head.

Jim stood outside the ICU, shoulders against the wall, looking at the floor, his mind in the hot, dark room he had left. Then he heard noise from the direction of the next ICU room. Muffled voices -- then the door opened with another rush of heated air past Jim's head, and the voices were no longer muffled. 

"I never -- I only -- " Akino was backing out, stammering, looking as terrified as if a wild animal was stalking him. 

"Out," said a voice like lava, so enraged the sound was almost not a word, and Jim could not think who was speaking.

" -- I thought it would help -- " Akino was beyond the doorway now, not six feet from Jim, still too terrified to take his eyes from whoever was just inside keeping the door open.

"You! Thought!" And now Strephon was standing in the doorway, hanging on to both sides, his face far more like Spock's in plak tow than Jim cared to remember.

"I shall kill him," said another voice, dull and cold as wind-chimes, higher than Niu usually spoke, but it was she who was twisting around Strephon, ducking under his arm, and holding -- Jim belatedly lunged toward them -- a knife.

He caught her halfway to Akino, who seemed to be mesmerized by the couple's rage. If she had been taller, with longer arms, Jim would not have been quick enough to save the young man, at least from injury. Her knife was only a few inches from Akino's eyes, and she stretched and writhed in Jim's grasp, still reaching, as the heat from Jiilau's room flowed past them. "Let me go!" she said, still in that mad voice. 

"What's going on?" Jim tried to shout, gripping with all his might. His hands and throat burned.

No one answered for several seconds. Then Lieutenants Jansen and Raschid from Security ran down the corridor toward them, and Niu slumped in Jim's grasp.

"Take him," she said, "take him, or I will kill him. He has murdered Aulua."

"No!" Akino protested. "I'd never hurt him! I wanted to help, is all, and I can't help it if it all went wrong! Nobody trusted Boridi -- he didn't -- " pointing to the door of Spock's ICU room " -- so I sent a message, that's all, to someone I . . . know . . . just to protect him!"

"He is the information leak," said Strephon. "Aulua should have known. I suspected." He raised his chin as if he were going to howl like a wolf. "Aulua! That Aulua should suffer for your -- your self-importance -- your anonymous tips and letters!"

Niu cried out unintelligibly and lunged for Akino again. Jansen threw herself at the woman and Raschid pulled the young man away. Jim said, "Put all three of them in the brig. Separate Akino and the others."

"Stop, Captain," said Strephon, suddenly calmer. He let go of the door and stepped out of it, and it closed. "Think again. Niu and I are not just anyone."

"No," said Jim, discovering he could express quite a bit of anger himself, even with his damaged voice, and feeling a rush of satisfaction at doing so, "you're not just anyone. You are two people who threatened a third with violence on my ship!" He disengaged from Niu, leaving her in Jansen's competent grip, and stepped forward, so close to Strephon that he could hear him swallow. "All right," he went on softly, "I will think again. I'll confine you and Niu to the guest quarters you were assigned, and the Security locks will be engaged until we return to Altair 6. There will be guards in the corridor outside, and the ship's computer system will monitor your actions inside. In fact, it will be just like the brig, but a little more private." His voice had thinned to a whisper against his will, but the space around them had gone so quiet that Jim thought everyone could hear him. When he looked around, Jansen and Raschid both said "Yes, sir," before he could repeat the order.

He turned back in the direction of Spock's ICU, and saw McCoy there. Jim didn't know how he expected Bones to react in these circumstances, but he was surprised when McCoy just stood there, without much expression on his face. When the others had gone, Bones put one hand on Jim's shoulder and said quietly, "Come to my office. I'll take another look at your throat and give you those medicines."

By the time they were in the office, the adrenaline had worn off and Jim felt shaky. McCoy looked down his throat and added a gargle to the little heap of stuff he put into Jim's hands. Jim stared down at the medicines, thinking of Spock and Aulua Jiilau, of Strephon who already thought the starship rooms were like prison cells.

"Come on, Jim," said McCoy, and took him, practically by the hand, back to captain's quarters. About halfway there, Jim shook himself mentally and tried to protest, but McCoy cut him off. "Don't talk," he said with a little edge to his voice, "listen. This is my chance to make my report, Captain," and Jim was too tired to make a fuss. As they walked on, McCoy started with general Sickbay stats, talking a little quickly, in the tone Jim associated with a stiff drink at the end of the day -- oh, yes, that would be when Bones really needed to talk something out but couldn't just say it. Jim began to pay attention. And then he was sorry, because Bones was talking about Spock's and Jiilau's burns, and any detail was horrifying. Jim wanted to know and yet had to force himself to listen, reminding himself that he was the captain, and he needed to hear whatever McCoy needed to say. The worst part was as they rounded the last curve of the corridor, when McCoy said slowly, "You know, Jim, if it comes to that, there are some fine prosthetics on the market. Spock could take a medical leave, get the physical therapy he'd need and come back."

It was all too much. Jim said something to McCoy, but couldn't remember what afterwards, and stepped blindly into his quarters. "Lights down," he gasped out, so the overhead ones just flickered. He shoved his handful of medications onto the ledge below the dividing grille, and then just stood in the near-dark of the emergency lights and the faint line at the edge of the door. If he hadn't been so bone-deep tired, he would have wanted to kick through the wall. His hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles ached and the skin pulled painfully. Fuck McCoy. Why couldn't he say, 'Jim, he'll be fine'? or 'Come back tomorrow and he'll be ready to go back to work'?

Or maybe, 'It's all a bad dream; it never really happened.'

No. So actually the first medication he was going to take was a non-REM-sleeping pill that McCoy had given him, a while back, after some other near escape when he couldn't sleep and needed to. Because this wasn't a bad dream, and he didn't want to know what kind of nightmare his subconscious could come up with, given today's material.

The pill worked, or maybe it was just fatigue, but the next morning, he didn't remember dreaming at all. He got up and put a uniform on over his sunburn-tender skin, and then went to Sickbay, and then to get some information out of Akino. 

It was like interrogating cooked spaghetti. It was easy enough to get the young man to confess that he had been the information leak, but he didn't even really seem to know who his own contacts were. He said he had sent the location of the meeting in the forest to someone in the Army High Command, and he thought his press contact was a particular vid journalist, and he did seem to know where his letters to Rachandra Estellare went. But later, when Jim was having Uhura search for the "code names" Akino had given them, she didn't have much luck. Jim couldn't tell what that meant. He wondered again and again if Spock could have coaxed more from the Altairian computers -- or from Jiilau's data disks, though the computer scientists in Spock's department were getting a lot out of them: the real names of conspirators and, even more interestingly, records of the pork barrels, outright gifts, and concessions that were being used to sway the Altair 6 legislature. All the money trails seemed to be there, and Jim could see that getting that proof had been worth the risk to Jiilau -- or worth it in that abstract, before-the-action way. He doubted any of it would seem enough if Jiilau lived to consider the question.

Certainly, neither Strephon nor Niu would be comforted by the data. He had seen them just after his interview with Akino, heard their apologies and apologized to them, everyone very diplomatic and cold as ice. Then he escorted them back to Sickbay, where they settled in to their vigil over their husband. Jim felt a bizarre envy as he left them in the ICU and went to the bridge, where the Science station seemed intolerably empty.

They went back to Altair 6. Jim stood in the transporter room to see off the sad group around Aulua Jiilau's life-support tank -- and then oversaw Akino's beamdown into the waiting arms of the Altair Intelligence Agency. 

Over the course of that alpha shift, Jim talked to Decker several times, apparently making a terrific impression of proper respect for rank because he could hardly keep his mind on what he was saying. He apologized for having the audacity to accede to Jiilau's request for transport and the unmitigated gall to save his life. All without Decker's supervision; he apologized for that, too. The only time he nearly lost his temper was during the last call, after alpha shift was over and he had been back to Sickbay again, when Decker was trying to be friendly.

"Heard one of your people got injured. Your first officer, I think? Too bad, Kirk. Too bad."

Rage boiled up in him until he actually had to look away from the screen, and both his hands -- now, after two more treatments, unmarked as the day he was born -- clenched again into helpless fists. "Yes, Matt, too bad," was all he could trust himself to say.

Of course, it was himself he was really angry at. And Matt shamed him by ignoring that anger and saying, "I've finally talked to Komack, too, after calling and leaving messages all day. I went to bat for us, Kirk. We did the right thing, trying to help -- what else are we for? You took a cartload of precautions, from your logs, though I still think . . . well, never mind that now. And we can't leave here while everything's in flux. Damn bureaucrats, why do they think we were here to begin with? To keep the peace, and what's at stake here right now? The same peace. Anyway, Komack finally agreed. We're staying until the acting head of government says go."

We did the right thing -- an amazing concession, from Matt. Jim tried to believe it.


	5. Act IV: Out of the Fire

Another alpha shift went by, as slowly as the first. Jiilau was still in coma, and the Altairian news gave almost minute-by-minute reports on his progress. Jim had admired the man, but could rarely be bothered to ask Uhura for an upload. He had his own set of progress reports to check -- forcing himself not to ask for them too often -- and they were not Jiilau's.

Since they had arrived back at Altair 6, McCoy had been getting a steady stream of medical opinions, and the transporter room seemed more like the information desk at a burn-treatment conference than anything else. Jim supposed that, given the huge export trade in goldenwood, there was nothing so very odd about the Altair system being on the cutting edge of burn medicine. What really did surprise him was the number of offworlders who were doing research here, including Vulcan healers. One of them, T'Seru, became a formal part of the treatment team for Spock and even moved into quarters on the ship. She told them that Spock's unconsciousness was to be expected, that it was some form of trance that Vulcans entered to heal themselves. McCoy was apparently mortified that he hadn't known about it, because after that he told Jim three or four times all about how much he wanted a Vulcan-trained doctor on staff, or anyway a specialist in xenomedicine.

"I thought you wrote the book on xenomedicine," Jim said the first time Bones brought it up.

"Oh, that's a first-year text," said McCoy, alerting Jim to the fact that things had been added to his senior staff's vitae since he had last checked. Catching up gave him something to do in his off-time, not that he could really keep his mind on that either. When he couldn't read any more updates, he made the mistake of accessing some visuals on burns and their treatment. He didn't eat much dinner after that. Still no dreams, though.

He visited Spock. T'Seru always sat beside the bed and radiated disapproval, and of course Spock always seemed about the same. The terrible bright green color gradually faded; he was less swollen, and his arms were now stretched out so that the forearms and hands fit into suspension tanks, an Altairian technique. But he was still not there, an unconsciousness as profound as coma, an absence like death.

The first time, Jim allowed himself to smooth and slide his fingertips into the unburned dark hair. He was surprised by the strength of his own emotion, and he obviously surprised T'Seru, who reprimanded him: "Captain." He looked up without moving his fingers from the warm softness surrounding them. "He is a touch telepath," she added.

"I want him to know I'm here," he said, and moved his fingers to brush the extra heat of Spock's scalp.

"He hears us. You risk distracting him from the healing work he needs to do."

She was, after all, the doctor; he withdrew his hand. "Well, Spock, I don't want to distract you." If he was hearing them, why was T'Seru talking over him like that? "I don't think I thanked you -- well, I know I didn't thank you this time, for coming back for me. You've gotten me out of trouble so many times. I wish you hadn't been hurt." So many things to say to Spock had crowded his mind, had chattered to him in the turbolift and the corridor, and now he couldn't seem to put words together. Of course the icy blast of T'Seru's gaze on him was not helping. She made T'Pau seem cozy. He considered telling Spock that, and seeing how she reacted. Not an option, but definitely tempting. "Spock, I miss you," he said. "Please get well." He paused again, but what else was there, really? "I'll come back soon," he promised, and left.

Later visits were hardly longer than the first. He tried not to start really disliking T'Seru, but it was not easy. Under her eyes he felt useless, even a risk factor in Spock's prognosis, and he never could stay long or find much to say.

Spock woke up from his trance in the middle of the third ship's night since the fire; T'Seru was with him, and neither McCoy nor Jim knew about it until afterward. In the morning, when Jim stopped in to visit on his way to the bridge, he found the two doctors moving around each other as stiffly as two strange cats, but much more silently, and Spock looking up at them with a resigned expression that suggested things in Sickbay had recently been worse.

When Spock looked past the feuding doctors to the door and met Jim's eyes, Jim felt a firework go off behind his breastbone. Sparks were still fading along his arms and into his stomach as he walked up to the side of the bed. "You're back," he said, not the brightest remark he could have made under the circumstances, and not any of the ones he had planned.

"Yes," said Spock. "You are well."

"He is recovered," said T'Seru, reminding them that there were two other people in the room. "You, on the other hand, have much healing to do, and can best do so undisturbed."

The three men looked at her: Spock was unreadable; McCoy looked like he was about to begin a nasty interstellar incident. Jim pulled himself together. Her attitude didn't matter now, anyway, if Spock was going to be all right. "I'm just dropping in," he said, "I'll come back later, shall I, Spock?"

"Spock," said T'Seru sternly.

"It is conventional for a captain to visit those members of the crew who are wounded or ill," Spock explained to her. "Crewmates also make such visits. It prevents much of the difficulty of reintegration to work shifts later, and increases the general efficiency of the starship crew."

McCoy brightened. "That's right," he said, "and I've by-god got the statistics to prove it, Doctor, if you'd like to see them."

"Statistics about humans," T'Seru stated flatly.

"The majority of the crew is human," Spock pointed out. "I have had to adapt to their customs."

T'Seru considered. "You know," she said to Spock, "that interacting with these emotional beings produces unnecessary stress."

"I have become inured to it," Spock replied. "I would prefer to receive the conventional visits."

"Then I have nothing further to say."

She stood there, bristling with what she had not yet said: conclusive, non-Spock proof that the idea that Vulcans could not lie was a pure myth.

Jim left her there, having won his point, and swept McCoy off to find out what had gotten so far up his nose.

"Damn that woman!" McCoy rattled around his office, picking up disks, a stylus, a padd, an empty coffee cup, and so forth, and dropping them to the desk or the shelves again as new aspects of his grievance swept over him. "She may be an expert in Vulcan medicine, but this is my Sickbay, Jim. When a patient has a crisis I expect to be advised! I didn't ask her here so she could by Christ take over! Or spend her time judging the way I run the rest of the facility! She has no more bedside manner than a rock, how can she have the gall to criticize!"

Jim was missing most of this, but decided he really didn't need to understand the details. The overall shape of events was gradually becoming clear. "Spock had a crisis? When?"

"He woke up, didn't he? Didn't she think I might be interested in that information? Does she think I need my goddamn beauty sleep too much to call me? Doesn't she know I spend half my goddamn time off in this office or on the wards anyway?"

"If she doesn't," said Jim with affection, "she hasn't been paying much attention since she got here."

"Probably thinks it's normal! Maybe Vulcan healers never sleep at all. They sure as fuck don't share information, so I suppose they can't take much off each other's hands."

"She didn't call you at all?"

"I didn't know one goddamn thing until I got here just as usual, and stopped in to see how Spock was doing. There he was, awake, and she was lecturing him about some damn Vulcan brain thing, and when I came in to say hello and glad-you're-better, she climbed all over me. Shit, Jim, don't we get to be happy he's not dead? What kind of ice water does that woman have in her veins anyway?"

"She's a Vulcan -- " at McCoy's raised eyebrow, Jim said, "Spock . . . is different," wondering how different he was.

"Obviously that's what's bothering her, too. Well, all I can say is, if she's an example of what he'd be like without us, I'm gonna start to retrain him even harder. I'd like to see him mellow more, not shrivel up inside like that woman."

"I don't think there's much danger of it. Anyway, don't start retraining until she's gone."

"Can't be soon enough for me. Though you do know, Jim, we're not out of the woods yet. We don't know yet how his hands are. Unless, of course, that damn woman knows something she hasn't seen fit to share with us lower forms of life."

Jim regarded him narrowly. "Are you going to be able to work with her . . . Doctor?"

McCoy nodded, his wry expression saying he heard everything Jim was trying to ask. "Yes, Captain, I will."

"Then call me when you know anything. I'll get up to the bridge." He glanced back as he got to the door, to find McCoy still looking at him, slightly smiling. 

And now, when he had almost stopped waiting for it, benediction came. "I think he's going to be OK," said McCoy. "Basically OK."

"Thanks, Bones." And then he really did go.

~~~~~

McCoy did a little real tidying after the captain had gone, and deep breathing as well. He really was under control now, though he doubted that at his best he had what Spock and that woman would consider control. OK, Len, tell me three good things about T'Seru. Nothing came to him immediately, which was ridiculous. But he really had not liked the tone she had been taking with Spock when he got there this morning, even aside from her treatment of himself and Jim. She needed to face the fact that a phalanx of Romulan Warbirds would not keep Jim out of that ICU as long as Spock was there. Now, what about those three good things? Intelligence -- if not street smarts -- no, start again. Beautiful eyes. You old sexist, Len. But that's one. She knows burns back and forward and back again. She had taken one look at the records and told him things he had needed a whole day to work out, plus things he would never have worked out if he'd had a million years. Creative, as a doctor. Those suspension units are her design. OK, that's three. So what if she thinks you're scum? You've worked with worse. He squared his shoulders, threw the coffee cup into the recycler, and went back to the ICU to examine Spock whether T'Seru liked it or not.

McCoy had seen heat, radiation, and electricity burns, new and old, regenerated and scarred, and so it was no surprise to him that the hands that emerged from the suspension units were dry, shiny claws, wrinkled and stiff as a mummy's. What did astound him was how whole they looked, and the fact that Spock could move the digits and had some sensation in all of them. This was all excellent news, and McCoy gloated over even the fused fingers. Those, he could fix, and the skin too. He told Spock so, and some of the tension went out of the Vulcan's shoulders.

"Movement would be hard anyway -- the skin's too tight, but we'll get it supple again. That trance of yours is amazing! Looks like all the tissue is getting circulation, nerve responses -- I can't tell you how much work you've saved me. No debridement. My goal in life is never to do one of those things."

"I too find that goal desirable," said Spock.

"Avoiding the need for debridement is desirable for more reasons than to conserve the energy of the medical professional," said T'Seru. McCoy rolled his eyes at Spock, who tried to look as if he had not noticed any of it.

"Thank you for pointing out that little detail," McCoy said, though he supposed afterward (always afterward -- someday his mouth would get him into more trouble than he could handle) that it would have been better left unsaid. T'Seru didn't respond verbally, though, so he supposed she was trying to be a good professional too.

Later that day, they shared the major surgery on Spock's hands, and he was impressed all over again at her speed and self-confidence. She was good; he had to admit it. She separated the fingers beautifully, and her grafts were smooth. Every hour that passed left McCoy with more confidence that Spock would recover fully. He was sorry now he had scared Jim with the mention of prosthetics, even though McCoy made it a point to let him know the concrete results of his wild risks. It wasn't that McCoy wanted to increase Jim's guilt, which tended to get out of control anyway, but that he wanted the captain to look ahead, to predict the damage as well as the gains. If Jiilau had done that, none of them would be thinking about burns now.

Soon, the main problem they'd have with Spock's convalescence would be crowd control for his visitors. Already most of the alpha-shift Bridge crew and the Science-department people who worked directly with Spock had been in, some getting no farther than McCoy's office or the door of the ICU -- that was while Spock was in trance -- but now that he was awake, Uhura and Chekov and even Scott had stopped for a few minutes to chat. It was quite a sight to see them trying to make small talk with Spock (Spock!) while eyeing the bandages on his hands and T'Seru's grim face. 

And then there was Chris Chapel, who had originally hung around T'Seru, offering assistance and lunch breaks and help with Starfleet and Sickbay procedures until T'Seru had banned her from the ICU. When Spock began to have visitors, Chapel obviously found her own banishment insulting as well as unfair. So did McCoy, who had never been averse to Spock having to deal with a little unrequited feeling on the part of someone as expressive as Christine. Might even give him a few pointers on asking for what he wants, McCoy thought without much conviction. But what he was convinced of was that Christine deserved to have and to show her feelings, too, and that Spock's recovery was hardly going to be slowed down by one more visitor. He overruled T'Seru, in one of the icy non-confrontations that were becoming more frequent all the time. Christine thanked him afterward with more restraint than he had really expected. 

Spock, when McCoy dropped in on their stilted conversation, seemed resigned. He said gently -- but he was always gentle with her -- "Nurse Chapel, if you do not mind, I have some questions I need to ask Doctor McCoy," and she made her farewells and left without much visible embarrassment.

"What questions do you have for Doctor McCoy that I cannot answer?" asked T'Seru. McCoy wondered if she had any idea how transparently her territorialism showed -- or if she simply didn't count that as an emotional response. It occurred to him suddenly that she might not be married, and that she might know that Spock wasn't, either. Oh, good grief, as if we needed that complication.

Spock had a ready answer for her, again. It was as if he had woken up with a list of them all tidy in his mind. "I am consulting both of you, but Doctor McCoy is the chief medical officer, and it is his recommendation which will be recorded in his log and thus be Starfleet's guide as to the correctness of my subsequent behavior."

"You mean you want to leave Sickbay," McCoy said. "You always want to leave Sickbay."

"I do now, yes," Spock replied. "Is there any compelling reason why I should not?"

McCoy examined Spock's hands again, mostly to give himself time to think. They were now blotched olive and apple-green and soft, the skin probably tender to the touch, perhaps painful or itchy. Of course, Spock never admitted those sensations, so it was difficult to tell. There was certainly no reason for T'Seru's round-the-clock observation. The real trouble, as always, was that if Spock left Sickbay, he was very unlikely to rest, and that he still did need.

"You won't be able to go back on duty," McCoy warned. "You can't play around with your computer terminal. I know you, Spock, practically nothing can keep you from working! Mmm, I don't trust you. I'd like to keep you here until the beginning of next beta shift."

"If I stay in quarters for the next gamma and alpha shifts, surely it would serve the same purpose?" Spock negotiated.

McCoy closed the deal. "Alpha shift it is, and stay out of the labs and off the Bridge until I say otherwise."

"I trust you will inform me when I am being consulted," said T'Seru.

"Do you disagree?" asked McCoy. "Given the success of the surgery and the rate of recovery here? All due to Vulcan strength and discipline?"

She stared long and hard at him, and he looked blandly back. Then she turned to Spock and said, "Let me examine your hands."

McCoy stood back and relaxed. A done deal. She was practically back on Altair Six already.

~~~~~

"Come," said Jim absently, looking up from the book he was reading after dinner, and was taken aback when the door opened and revealed Spock. Of course, McCoy had told him that Spock was leaving Sickbay, but the doctor had been vehement about Spock's resting, so Jim had reluctantly decided not to visit.

It was the surprise, perhaps, that made Jim smile, his mouth stretching without his conscious intent and beyond his control. He rested his eyes on the tall figure in blue and black, the glossy dark hair dimmed for a moment as Spock moved through the door and under the overhanging bulkhead, but shining again as he came farther in.

"Spock, are you playing hooky? McCoy said you were going to stay in your quarters."

"I believe," said Spock, "that you worked an entire alpha shift three days ago, when you were in very nearly the same physical condition that I am now."

"I don't think that's really the same thing. But sit down, please."

"Why is it not the same thing?" asked Spock as he sat down on the other side of the desk, holding his hands carefully away from contact with the chair or his own legs.

Was he still in pain? "Spock, your hands --"

"Healing, Jim," Spock reassured him, and then repeated more vehemently, "They are healing. I came to show you that they are."

"Then show me."

Spock extended them over the desk, and Jim took his first real look at them since the fire. Allowing for the natural difference in color, they did look roughly like his, when he had been released from Sickbay. He raised his own hand, paused and glanced at Spock, and then he did touch his friend's warmer skin.

He brushed the backs of Spock's hands, where the new skin was as soft and smooth as a baby's over the strong tendons and large knuckles his eyes knew. So soft -- he repeated the movement with both hands, marveling at the sensation. His fingers dipped between Spock's, where the grafted skin was even more tender and tiny ridges betrayed the edges of the surgeries. Spock's fingers closed just slightly, in a movement that might have been defensive, and Jim looked up to see if there was pain in his face.

Spock's eyes held him, the clear brown depths so accepting and so warm that Jim was immobilized. He found he had slid his fingers between Spock's as far as they would go; they were virtually holding hands. Dimly Jim realized that he was breaking his own rules, but he could not bring himself to pull away.

"Am I hurting you," he murmured, but did not wait for an answer; the feeling of Spock's skin was too intoxicating to stop stroking it. He traced the outsides of Spock's hands, and ran fingertips across Spock's outstretched ones. The long, green-tinged fingers were quivering, reaching, though Spock did not move his arms. Jim turned his wrists and rubbed along Spock's palms, back to the hollow between tendons where a gentle pressure let him feel the hot rush of Spock's pulse.

The sound of an exhalation made Jim look up again to see Spock's lips just parted, and in his eyes much the same expression he had worn before, in his quarters, in pon farr: vitally alive, compelling, sweet, undefended, seeing so far into Jim that he felt the inside of his skull, the muscles squeezing his heart, the skin of his cock and balls warm with Spock's regard. There was no dark corner in Jim that Spock could not see. Even now, with the desk between them and perhaps two inches of their skin in contact, there was no place in Jim that Spock did not touch.

Jim clutched convulsively at the warm palms above his own and, this time, Spock did flinch -- only a tiny movement, but Jim let go at once. Spock's eyes closed. Jim held the edge of the desk. Spock's face was blank when he opened his eyes, and he too withdrew his hands.

"You have remembered," he said, "that you need your first officer."

"Is that what I'm thinking? I don't even know." Jim shook his head. "I need you. I hurt you. I --"

"You did not," Spock interrupted, "actually order me into the fire. You did not even order me to trace the smell of the smoke. You certainly did not order me to catch the branch and burn myself." He paused. "I have been expecting a reprimand, in fact."

Smiling in spite of himself, Jim said, "Don't ever hurt yourself that badly again, mister. Doing something I didn't order." The caveat made him pause, and realize guiltily, "If we'd known going in that Jiilau was in the fire -- well, I don't know what I might have ordered."

"Jim, would you spare yourself? You never do. Why should anything you . . . feel for me make you wish to spare me?" When Jim did not answer, Spock took a deep breath and said with bleak evenness, "Perhaps I presume."

"No," Jim said, "No, Spock." But he could not immediately put his complicated feelings into words. Again Spock came to his rescue.

"When I was in trance," he began, and then, uncharacteristically, backtracked. "The healing trance is an altered form of consciousness. Hearing, touch, and telepathic sensitivity are all present, but the tranced person may not remember all that happens." He paused to mark the end of his parenthesis, and then went on, "I do not remember anything immediately after the fire. The first thing I remember is feeling you touch my hair. Your emotions were so strong that I could not help but perceive them."

"I was afraid for you. Relieved you were alive. Worried. I always want to do something, but -- " Jim stopped, looked at the desk, then back at Spock.

Spock nodded, accepting what he must know was a partial list. "You could not control the situation then. Now, to feel in control, to make a decision that you can carry through and be satisfied with, you need information. I am your first officer and your friend; it is my role to give information to you." Another slight pause, and then he gave it, one evenly pronounced sentence at a time. "I am nearly healed. There is no reason for you to harbor any negative emotions about my injury. My own desires and emotions are much as they were when I was in pon farr, though they no longer threaten my life. You are free to decide. But I would have you choose me, Jim. I would choose you."

Jim could not breathe. Spock was propositioning him, and he could not get air enough to answer. But apparently what was on his face did not look like rejection, because Spock did not withdraw behind his Vulcan mask this time. 

He had been leaning forward, looking into Jim's eyes, and he simply leaned a little farther and stood, moving gracefully, never breaking eye contact. "Please consider what I have said."

In another moment Spock would go, and Jim would never have matched that candid bravery. "Don't," Jim forced out, "don't leave like that." He got up and took the few steps necessary -- Spock met him at the end of the table -- and Jim put his arms around his first officer.

Spock's arms closed around him firmly, though his hands remained relaxed. The side of one hand brushed Jim's cheek, and he turned his face into Spock's shoulder. Spock's warmth surrounded him. He breathed in and savored the coppery-spicy-sweet smell. Spock rubbed up to his shoulders and down again, with his forearm and the back of his hand. Jim felt the knuckles bump along his spine, and held Spock more tightly, sliding his arms upward to hang onto Spock's shoulders. They kissed; Jim knew he ought to answer verbally as well, but when he moved his head back Spock followed and slid his lips slowly back and forth across Jim's, slipping his tongue between Jim's teeth and his upper lip, and suckling the lip until one strong wrist pushed Jim's head back where it had been and Spock deepened the kiss.

One of them made a sound, half a murmuring word, half a moan, but it was trapped between their mouths and Jim did not know whose voice it was. To feel this again, this heat around and rising inside him, Spock's body and his own both shaking and straining to push together as if they could literally merge -- no, actually, this was not something he felt again. This he was feeling for the only, the first time. He broke the kiss gasping for air, and Spock put his head down on Jim's shoulder and gasped too. Real. The breath at Jim's ear, puffing on his neck, convinced him.

As real as the erections trapped between them; as real as the fragile skin on Spock's hands. "Now," Jim said into Spock's temple. "Do we try some sort of hands-free sex, or do we try to step away?"

"You," said Spock hoarsely, with uneven pauses between the words, "are evidently, giving me an ill-timed, example, of the human, sense of humor."

And Jim did laugh, and catch his breath, and laugh again, "Oh, my friend," and kiss all of Spock's skin that his lips could reach. Sweet. Sweet, and just slightly rough. Tongue between his lips, Jim pulled back, craving the taste of all Spock's skin as if it were air.

Spock sat on the edge of the bed, hands upturned loosely on his knees, and Jim began to undress him. The close-fitting arms of the blue Sciences uniform shirt were resistant, and in the end he pulled the body of the shirt over Spock's head and peeled the sleeves off inside-out. The awkwardness of it made laughter bubble up in his chest again. He ran his palms over the surface of Spock's black t-shirt, filling his imagination with the shapes of the flesh beneath. The black knit stretched and bunched, and Jim took handfuls of it and pulled, and worked it out where it was tucked into the uniform pants. Reaching around to the back of the shirt, his arms closing on Spock, Jim felt the gentlest touches on his neck and hair, and looked up to find that luminous stare again. 

He heard Spock say, "Jim," and his heart turned over. They kissed again, and Spock stroked his neck and ears while Jim reached under the t-shirt to touch the fine hot skin over his ribs, the damp tangles of hair up his belly and on his chest and back in his even-hotter armpits. Spock squirmed like a tickled child and mouthed Jim's hair, panting, and at last slid his teeth along the edge of Jim's ear, bit the skin behind it, and sucked there. Jim's fingers were in the arm-holes of the t-shirt, and he slid them over Spock's biceps as far as they would go before he went back to pulling up the rest of it. The problem this time was getting it over Spock's head, as neither of them wanted him to stop kissing Jim's neck, but eventually they did it, and the t-shirt joined the blue uniform shirt on the floor.

"Let me," Spock said, softly, into Jim's ear, licking between the words, "let," his thumbs were hooked under Jim's shirt, "me," the thumbnail and knuckle and the bone above the wrist scraping up each of Jim's sides, "do," fingertips and nails now running down and up either side of his spine, "this," and now it was Jim writhing and working his way out of the tangle of shirt around his neck and shoulders. He threw it down, and Spock bent his head and took one of Jim's nipples in his mouth, holding his waist between forearms that were rigid and furry and hot. Jim's back arched, his head and shoulders falling away as his hips pushed toward Spock, and he could not have kept his balance if Spock's arms had not held him, if his own hands had not locked above Spock's elbows. Every part of his body, even to his eyelids and the lobes of his ears, pounded with his pulse, and his head spun.

Jim's hands shook so much when he tried to unfasten Spock's pants that he couldn't hold on to the clip at the top. Spock, trying to reach around Jim's arms, was having much the same problem. Any moment now, with Spock's fingers moving there, Jim would come in his pants; "Spock," he groaned as he squinted at his own fumbling hands and the bulge he kept rubbing, half by mistake. Spock murmured something in reply -- the low vibration seemed to go directly to Jim's hands and resonate there -- and Spock's hips and thighs jerked and trembled with his clenching muscles, which was not helping Jim's trouble with the clip. There! He had it, and then the other fastenings, and the fabric parted to give just a glimpse of the black briefs beneath, and a new wave of copper and honey, ginger/pepper/brown sugar, caught on his tongue and at the back of his throat. How could he have forgotten, how could he have stopped thinking about it for an instant?

Spock moved as if to stand up, but Jim pushed his shoulders back, guided him until he was leaning back on his elbows. The light above the bed fell on his slightly-tousled hair, the green flush on his cheekbones and neck; it blazed in his eyes, glistened on his mouth -- "Mmm, look at you," Jim said, gazing across the breadth of his shoulders, taut arms, hard green nipples in the dark hair on his chest --

"I cannot," said Spock, "but I am looking at you," and Jim had to lean over and kiss him, burying his fingertips in the short springy chest hair, outlining its edges from collarbone in, then out to the edge of his chest, then down the stomach, lower, below the hip bones -- Spock let his head fall back. Jim ran his lips down the long hot throat, sucking his adam's apple, while Spock murmured again, the syllables still not making sense to Jim, but feeling wonderful as they vibrated against his mouth with that delicious, unsalty, succulent spiced taste. Jim's hips pressed into the side of the bed, squeezing his erection until it hurt. He had to get his pants off. He kicked off his boots, holding Spock's ribs, and then pushed himself up, took his hands reluctantly away, and shakily pulled his pants down and tossed them aside too. His cock sprang out with a rush that weakened his knees, and he let them bend, kneeling -- Spock sat up and looked down at him -- to grasp one of Spock's uniform boots, which fit more tightly than his own.

In fact, they fit so tightly that Jim pulled on them in vain, until his own palms stung. "How did you get these things on, anyway?"

Spock did not answer, unless running his fingers through Jim's hair was a reply, and Jim impatiently jerked and twisted the boot from side to side until it finally came off with a jerk. As he rose a little to flick the boot over the pile of clothes now on the floor, Spock's toes brushed across the tip of Jim's cock and he fell back, gasping. Another boot, he reminded himself. Spock's pants. Still, he had to rest his head against Spock's leg for a moment, fighting for control.

Again he felt Spock's fingers on his head. "Jim," said the deep voice, "Th'y'la," syllables beginning to sound a little familiar, "what is the matter?"

"I want you too much. I want everything, all of you, right now."

"Yes," said the deep voice, the points of warmth on his scalp, the stirring of the leg beside his cheek, "Yes."

Jim turned and attacked the other boot with savage energy, got it off and threw it at the wall, surged up between Spock's legs and slid down his pants almost in one movement. Spock had leaned back on his elbows again, and Jim put his arms around Spock's thighs and his face into the hollow between cock and hip. Such richness, this skin, this heat, this smell -- he licked and nuzzled around the smoother skin stretched over bone, the warmer, velvet skin of the balls, the veined, hottest skin of the cock, his hands sliding under and around Spock's thighs and his mouth closing, at last, on the head, down to the first ridge. He ran his tongue around it, and around again; he opened his mouth further and tongued the skin between the ridges. Spock's hips lifted, and Jim's fingers found the crease between his tight buttocks, and Spock jumped beneath him. Jim could feel the tension growing in Spock's muscles, feel how close he was, taste the fluid seeping into his mouth, and kept going, yes, come, now, come for me, staring at the flushed, uncontrolled, sweaty face as Spock turned his head to one side, then the other, his jaw clenching and his eyes shut. He was thrusting into Jim's mouth; then a moment of stillness and Jim felt the rush build and then burst down his throat, and he gulped gratefully.

Spock caught blindly at Jim's ear and shoulder, urging him closer, and they struggled backward until both were lying on the narrow bed. Spock reached between their bodies and grasped Jim's cock, the long fingers firm as he stroked from tip to base, base to tip, back and forth, and Jim meant to tell him that this was not hands-free sex but could do nothing but gasp. Then Spock sat up, nudged Jim's hips over to the center of the bed and bent over to lick him. If Spock's skin was hot, his mouth was hotter still; the moment that searing wetness closed around him, Jim was coming, shuddering and arching his back and gone, gone, in a flash of throbbing heat like the heart of a star.

Spock moved up, braced on hip and elbow, until he leaned across Jim but barely touched him; Jim wrapped his arms and one leg around Spock, who rubbed his face against Jim's collarbone. "Next to this," he said, then paused to kiss Jim's shoulder and his neck, "I have never known pleasure."

"It was amazing," Jim said. "You are."

Spock dropped his forehead into Jim's neck. "Th'y'la," he said again, and again did not explain. 

Jim left it: there was something else he wanted to ask. "Spock, did you know this would happen?"

"I . . . hoped for it," said Spock. "I believed that you felt strongly about me, and I knew how I regarded you. I thought you had made a decision which was -- not profitable for either of us, in the long run." He raised his head and looked into Jim's eyes. "You have worried about how a changed relationship with me would affect your command decisions. I did not think that you realized how an unresolved relationship would affect them."

Jim's arms tightened. "If I had lost you in that fire."

"That is not really an example, as you took no command decision."

The dispassionate voice he heard, the warm bare skin he felt against his own, were so incongruous that Jim laughed a little. 

As if he had not heard, Spock went on, "If you ordered me into a situation that later proved fatal, would you feel less guilty if we had never spoken the truth to each other, or never touched each other?"

"It just seems so sudden," Jim said, pulling out of the realm of speculation.

"It does not seem so to me. The night of the reception -- "

Remorse swept Jim. "Ah, Spock, I'm sorry." He reached for Spock's face and stroked it. 

"You did not expect me to react. I had not anticipated that."

"After all this time? As long as I've known you, you've said you had no feelings."

"And for as long, you have refused to believe that."

"Are you telling me I was right all along? That McCoy was right?"

"No. McCoy was usually wrong."

Jim laughed again. "So just how illogical are you now?"

"Not at all. To appreciate excellence, to desire what causes pleasure, to enhance our mutual confidence, are these things illogical?"

"In fact," said Jim, sliding his hands down to Spock's ass and rubbing it, "this has been quite an intellectual exercise."

Spock kissed him, his tongue moving in the same rhythm as Jim's hands. "Yes," he murmured on his way from Jim's mouth to his neck. Then he kissed Jim's shoulder, the inside of his upper arm, and Jim's hands came up to his shoulders and gripped hard. "I see . . . you need . . . more examples . . . of this particular intellectual mode."

"Oh, yes," Jim answered.

~~~~~~~

Spock woke. Jim lay sprawled across his body, his downturned face beside Spock's. Spock's thoughts slowly assembled, and he felt Jim's weight riding up and down on his own ribs, heard Jim's snoring inhalations, saw Jim's dream . . . probably it was this that had woken him. Jim was dreaming of Spock, a mixture of images in Spock's quarters, the flicker of the firepot, scattered glimpses of Spock's shoulder, hands, hip, jaw, ear. The dark shape on the bed as Jim dressed himself. Disorganized dream-feelings, desolation and anger and lust, so strong that Jim's breathing quickened and Spock thought he would wake in the storm of those emotions.

Spock reached up to stroke along Jim's sides, then up and down his back. The muscles that had begun to tense against Spock, relaxed, but his own palms prickled and stung as he dragged them across the damp, cooler human surface. Pain and tenderness, sharp and soft, heat and chill . . . so they were together, he and Jim, and Spock would not have traded one instant of this night for any simpler bliss. He turned his head until his cheek met Jim's, one hand now at the nape of Jim's neck and the other rubbing at the base of his spine, then smoothing down the nearer buttock. 

"Mmm," said Jim, and pressed his face closer without opening his eyes, pulled in his arms and held Spock, tightening his grasp slowly as he woke. Spock felt the shift to awareness, and the light brush of Jim's lashes as he opened, then blinked his eyes. Spock took a quick breath himself as Jim's mouth found his earlobe and sucked it in.

Jim drew up one knee and shifted some of his weight; Spock made a protesting sound and held on, wanting the length of body and leg against him. The human knee pressed against the Vulcan heart; Jim's toes slid cold under Spock, who dropped his arm to trace the line between thigh and calf, and then the outside of Jim's ankle, and then around and around the callus of his heel. Jim bit Spock's neck, not hard, and then kissed him, and Spock discovered he was hungry for the taste of bitter, sleep-stale saliva on Jim's tongue.

An even better taste was the salt of Jim's skin, and Spock sucked at the tender neck and shoulder languidly. Jim stroked him now, seeming especially taken with chest and armpits and stomach, oddly fascinated with Spock's body hair for someone who removed so much of his own. Spock bent the leg Jim was not lying on and turned a little, leaning the inside of his thigh against Jim's hip. Jim's hand strayed over Spock's flank in lazy circles. For some time they moved against each other, not speaking, too tired for sex and never really erect but unwilling to separate, unwilling to stop tasting and touching each other, waves of emotion eddying back and forth between them without urgency. It felt good, to Spock, to both of them. It all felt good, and the pleasure of it faded only into sleep's shared darkness.

Neither knew, when they woke again, which had stirred first. Neither moved away. Spock now lay with one hand extended off the side of the bed and the other arm draped over Jim, who was spooned closely into the angles of his body, keeping him just warm enough for sleep. Jim took a deep, slow, easy breath, and so did Spock. Then Jim pushed the back of his head into Spock's shoulder, and tensed all his muscles, arching his back, straightening his legs and bringing up one elbow in what would have been a stretch if there had been room for one. Then he relaxed again, reaching back to lay his free hand on Spock's hip. Spock bent his head and put his face into the musky tangles of Jim's hair, feeling the wonder of Jim's utterly relaxed, almost unthinking mind.

"OK?" asked Jim in a fuzzy voice.

Spock took a moment to realize what he was being asked, and then he said softly, "I am well."

"Not quite," Jim said, still drowsily, "but you will be. Few more treatments. Rest." He yawned. "'S a medical order."

Spock held him close, and his voice was still low. "Yes, sir."

After some time, Jim said, "How long did we sleep this time?"

"Between three and four hours."

A low chuckle. "Between?"

If he had taken thought, Spock could have told the minutes, but instead he kissed the back of Jim's head. Jim slid his hand up to Spock's waist and back down to the hip, and yawned again.

The comm whistled.

"Oh, God," said Jim, but he already sounded more awake than he had a moment ago. He sat up and rubbed his forehead. Spock reached for his back, but he stood. 

Spock shivered and sat up himself. The comm whistled again. Jim reached the desk, shut off the screen, and then pressed a button. "Kirk here," he said. He leaned over the terminal rather than sitting down, and Spock stood and watched him through the dividing grille.

"Captain?" asked an uncertain voice.

"Here," Jim repeated. "Screen's off."

"Oh." The new gamma-shift Communications officer, Lieutenant Palmer, paused and then said, "Sorry, Captain, did I wake you? I thought you ought to know right away. We've been monitoring the Altair 6 video frequencies for news on President Jiilau's condition?" Her voice rose on the end of the sentence, a little uncertainly.

"I remember. Did something happen?" Jim's shoulders shifted just a little with tension, and his voice was sharper.

"Yes, Captain. He died, sir."

After a pause, Jim said, "Lieutenant, please upload the reports and send a copy to my terminal."

"Yes, sir." 

"Thank you. Kirk out." He stood at the desk, his head still bent. "Damn, Spock. I liked him. Admired him."

"I too."

"Well." He straightened. "Hell of a way to start a long day. I'll call Niu and Strephon. There'll be a funeral, too." He turned and took a step away from the desk as if to pace, as he so often did while thinking or speaking of something which disturbed him, and then seemed to remember that he was naked. He looked down at himself and then at Spock, wearing a rueful expression which tugged at Spock's breath -- although, as he admitted to himself, the sight of Jim walking around his quarters with not one piece of clothing on had been affecting his breathing all along.

Jim walked back into the sleeping area and up to Spock, pressing against his body and hugging his waist. "When you look at me that way -- " he began.

"What way is that?" Spock asked, breathing in Jim, feeling Jim, looking into Jim's eyes. It was still hardly believable, and yet it was true. His voice had fallen without his meaning to lower it, and the sound reverberated deep in his chest. He could feel the vibrations of Jim's speech, too.

"Like -- oh, like Spock the morning after lovemaking." Jim put his face against Spock's neck, and Spock felt his lips move as he smiled, and as he spoke. His breath stirred the hair below Spock's throat. "Like a naked Vulcan in my quarters at -- what, four hundred hours?"

"Approximately."

"Mmm. You're worrying me. Do you really not know the time?"

"Four seventeen." He stroked Jim's hair and the nape of his neck. "You are sleepy. Can you not sleep again?"

"Not worth it, for less than an hour." Jim relaxed against Spock, who rubbed his back, gripping and massaging the unresisting muscles. "What are you doing with your hands?"

"I would have thought someone with your experience would recognize this movement."

"Funny. I mean, of course, that you are not supposed to be using your hands. If you're not careful, McCoy may bandage them."

"Then I would need even more assistance dressing -- and undressing -- and -- "

Jim kissed him. And then stepped away, sighing. "I want to get back in that bed with you. But there's not really enough time for that either. Oh -- " He stepped forward again, cupping Spock's face in his hands, and though his fingers were not on the meld points, Spock felt Jim's mind press against his as their bodies had just pressed together. It was obscurely comforting. Jim's thumbs moved in slow, firm strokes on Spock's cheeks, up from his jaw to under his cheekbones and back. "We have got to make this work. I want my lover in bed and my first officer on the bridge and my friend at the chessboard."

"We have done," said Spock, "far riskier things, and made them succeed."

At the near-quotation Jim grimaced, one of those ambivalent expressions which Spock had never truly learned to read; nor could he untangle the mixture of emotions and thoughts in Jim's touch before he lowered his hands and stepped back. "Let's get washed and dressed," he said.

They did so, though it required some maneuvering and compromise. Even sharing the bathroom was a new and slightly strange experience. Jim offered the use of his toothbrush, but Spock declined. Jim showered first, then dressed and went to Spock's quarters to get a clean Science uniform. Spock had an awkward minute or two waiting for Jim to get back. Somehow sitting naked on Jim's bed in Jim's absence made him feel anxious, and though he easily controlled the emotion, it puzzled him.

Jim said he would put on Spock's boots, but Spock insisted on dressing himself otherwise. In fact, Jim went into the office area and retrieved the video uploads, skimming through them, while Spock put on his uniform and overheard the audio track. He reflected that he could have the text summaries he preferred forwarded to his own terminal later.

"We regret to report that President Aulua Jiilau, after a tenure of just four days in office, has been gravely injured in what may be a terrorist attack . . .," Spock heard, and then the soft whirr of the fast-forward function, which continued to punctuate scraps of speech in many different voices: "Investigations continue into the mysterious attack on Aulua Jiilau, while his wife Niu has accepted the position of President Pro Tem, according to a tradition that dates back to the days of her warlord ancestors . . .The most important principle of all is system unity!" Spock was startled to recognize Niu's voice, for that sentence. " . . . From the historic meeting between President Pro Tem Jiilau and the Chair of the Altair 5 Aggregate Constitutional Committee . . . Upheaval and disarray in the Upper House . . .ministers resigning . . . resignation of the Commander in Chief of the United Altair Army . . . Our exclusive interview with Akino Kriinutuo . . . Live from the press conference of the Chief of Altair's Intelligence Agency . . . many arrests. I may assure the Altairian public, our brothers of the Five Aggregate, and the peoples of the Federation that we will not cease from investigation until the very last of these criminals have been tracked down, whether they are in hiding on Altair 5 or in the ministerial offices of the Upper House . . . "

Now Spock was dressed except for his boots, and he carried them out of the sleeping area to take the chair he had sat in 8.46 hours ago. Putting the boots on the floor, he loosely folded his hands, which were indeed better this morning, and Jim turned the screen so that they both could see it. This was the most recent recording, a montage of film clips from a newscast, with a voiceover: "Scandal and speculation surrounding the death of President Aulua Jiilau has not prevented the expression of grief from the millions who admired and loved him. Memorial services and effigy burials have sprung up everywhere, and the funeral pyre in the Capitol Square has reached a height of ten meters entirely from public contributions. From the polar settlement of Herinalon to Deep-Sea Station J, we are all, as Altairians, drawn together in mourning this extraordinary man, torn from us too soon."

Jim said, "Computer, end playback." He looked at Spock as if he did not quite see him, or perhaps it was that Jim saw, at this moment, only the first officer, and not the lover in stocking feet. "I was hoping they had finished the investigation." He smiled a little. "I wanted to hear the end of the story for once."

"An investigation of this scope will go on for a long period of time."

Jim glanced at the screen, nodded. "They still don't really know who set the fire. Not Boridi, obviously not Akino, and not a long list of people who were peripherally involved."

"There will be no one person to blame," Spock predicted. "Jim, you must let that go."

"It's hard," said Jim, with a rueful smile. "Hard even from the position of Captain of the Enterprise. If someone came from Altair 6 to set the fire, why didn't we know? Why didn't we prevent it?"

"There is continual traffic, Jim, and we could never stop that. You would not even want a report on every shuttle that ship's sensors detected. If any kind of capsule had been launched from space, be sure that we would have tracked it. No, the most likely scenario, to my mind, is that the fire was preset, the chemicals seeded by someone on Altair 5 who knew of the location of the meeting, and unidentifiable because of the sensor interference." Jim considered this, and Spock went on, "Akino is a foolish young man. It is probable that his contacts were not actually the people he thought they were. He may have given information to the terrorist group without ever knowing he had done so. They always posed the greatest immediate danger, as they stood to lose most from Boridi's treachery."

Jim nodded, then got up and came around the end of the desk. He touched Spock's shoulder and said, "Let's get those boots on," and knelt to do it.

"Something still troubles you," said Spock.

"This does," and Jim looked up with the right boot heel in his hands. "I hate to think of all the things you will do, but -- almost couldn't. I never really saw Aulua -- after the fire, but I did see some pictures -- " he looked down again, and slowly leaned in until his head just touched Spock's knee. "I can't let go just like that. You're right, I have to stop wanting someone to blame, but -- not yet."

At this angle, the light did not gild Jim's hair as it so often did. Spock put his fingers into the brown warmth and was profoundly grateful he could do so. Then Jim sat back on his heels and finished worrying the boots over the bones of Spock’s feet, and Spock waited until Jim got up to stand himself.

"Thank you," he said, and added, "Captain."

And Jim smiled at him just as he always had. This, Spock was certain, they would never lose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When this was a draft story, my betas told me to take out the laced boots. I refused because I knew I had seen Spock in laced hightops, but, um, that was while he was wearing that weird coverall thingie in "This Side of Paradise." So, a decade and a half later, I finally took my betareaders' advice.


	6. Epilog: Not Twice Shy

The next day was the state funeral.

At the end of the ceremony, Niu advanced on them, stately, bearing a goldenwood case with a gentle curve to its lid. "I give you this for Aulua: for his life and his death; for the services you did him and all of us. From Strephon and from me to James Kirk and Spock chaSarek; from Altair 6 to Starfleet. Please accept it."

Jim tried to respond appropriately, but the wood seemed oddly cold in his hands, and a kind of unhappiness and apprehension was prickling the hair on his arms and the back of his neck. Something in the expression of her eyes. "I thank you, Madame President, for Starfleet and the Federation. And for myself, I thank Niu Jiilau. May this gift connect us in friendship."

Spock reached out and placed one hand on the lid of the box, over the inset plaque recording their names, Aulua Jiilau's name, and the dates of his birth and death. Spock's other hand rose in the Vulcan salute. "Prosper in peace," he said, and Jim glanced at him, a little taken aback by this new version of the Vulcan saying. But then, this was hardly the time to speak of long lives.

Niu smiled tightly. "We work toward that," she said, and stepped back.

The rest of the ceremony dragged its lengthy way, and at last was over. Jim and Spock beamed up. On the way to Deck 5, Jim stood in the turbolift with Spock, his eyes resting on the elegant ears, the broad blue shoulders, the trim waist. He felt in his mind how the fabric would slide under his fingertips, how the warmth of Spock's body would come through, how his own damp scent would combine with Spock's desert-dry spice . . . Unfortunately, his hands were full of the box. He lowered them slightly in case, heaven forbid, anyone should get into the lift and notice the captain's hard-on. "Come to my quarters after you change?" he blurted, and felt profoundly stupid as Spock turned an inexpressive gaze on him. Isn't this one reason why I never get involved with my crew? Was that the captain speaking or the lover? Can he say no?

"Yes," said Spock in that voice like trained and distant thunder, and Jim wondered if he would ever hear that 'yes' again without arousal. Could get awkward in briefings, he thought, some of his sense of humor returning. They walked down the corridor to Jim's quarters, and Spock went on almost without pausing. Jim opened the door and went through it, thinking about what outer form this relationship could take. Spock could be trusted to say nothing, certainly, if they decided to go that route: look at all the things about himself he had already concealed, and there was no telling how much more Jim did not know. Yet Jim was sure that some version of their first sexual encounter, when Spock was in pon farr, was circulating among the crew, and who knew how that had gotten out? Concealment was probably futile; still, Jim thought publicity might be unwise. 

He turned it over in his mind as he took off his own dress uniform tunic and put on a wrap-around shirt, but didn't reach any conclusion. He was just fastening the buckle at his waist when the door sounded. "Come," he said, his breath suddenly short.

Spock stepped through the door, but came no farther, staying in the shadow. There was something tentative in the way he stood. "Isn't it strange," Jim said, walking toward him, "how it keeps feeling like the first time, like taking a chance?" He took Spock's hand in his and looked at it. "Even this," he said, and kissed the fingers wrapped around his own.

Spock's other hand brushed Jim's cheek and over the corner of his mouth. "Especially this," he said, and slid his fingers around to the back of Jim's head, pulling him close enough to kiss.

Slowly they explored each other's mouths. Slowly they pulled out of the kiss, looking into each other's eyes. "I like risks," said Jim, smiling.

"I know you do," Spock answered. "I would like . . ."

"What?"

"To see what is in that box," Spock's voice was solemn but there was a distinct twinkle in his eyes.

"All right, then," Jim said, stepping back. "Mr. Spock, would you do the honors?" They walked over to the desk where Jim had put the box. Spock pulled it toward himself, swung up the lid, and stood motionless.

Jim asked, "What is it?" and Spock turned the box without speaking.

Inside was a chess set made of goldenwood, nested in black velvet. The lighter pieces were covered in tiny ridges, intricate patterns carved in the glittering, pale-veined surface; the darker pieces were also unstained, but their lines and ridges were deep chocolate brown, much the color of Spock's eyes. Jim took out one piece, the black king, and looked at it more closely. It had a face, but the features were almost lost in tattoo-like patterns. He rubbed it with his thumb and confirmed that it was slightly rough even when stroked with the grain of the wood. Yet against the dark lines, the glinting minerals looked like tiny stars. "How did they do this?" he wondered.

"It is pyrogravure," said Spock. Jim didn't know the word; he looked up questioningly; Spock explained: "Wood-burning."

Jim dropped the king, which clattered back into the box, landing on top of the paler pieces. "God. Damn." Niu's voice in his mind said, for his life and his death. Pale and dark.

Spock picked up the king and tucked it into its own hollow. The sight of the scorched wood in his hand made Jim think of bandages, dreams too bad to remember, fear and guilt and pain. It made him angry, a slow aching anger that he knew would not lessen.

"I can't play chess with those," he said. 

Spock closed the box. "You need not," he answered.

"I'd like to put them into the recycler, or out an airlock."

"That would be unwise. They were, after all, a diplomatic gift. I will take the box to my quarters," Spock said.

"You like them?"

"I have no feeling about them."

Spock was wearing his most Vulcan lack of expression, and it made Jim feel for a moment that he must have been imagining everything between them: surely that face had never smiled, or those eyes held that astounding tenderness. "Spock," he said, and could hear the uncertainty in his own voice, and felt ashamed.

But only for that moment, because Spock turned to him, reached for him, and Jim put his arms around Spock and held tight. "I am here," said the deep voice.

"Yes. Stay," Jim said, wanting only, at that moment, to bury himself in Spock's warmth. They would put yesterday's problems away with the chess set; they would meet tomorrow's problems tomorrow. Now was for them alone.

~~~~~

Niu's burnt offering lay on the desk, forgotten, while a different coal burst back into flame.


End file.
